CJ Sansom - Revelation

Review by showhost
Another excellent novel by this author. If you like Tudor England & who dunnit’s then you will like this book. It has a great lead character, the hunchback lawyer – Matthew Shardlake.
Revelation gathers momentum in the harsh times of Tudor England, the dissolution of monastries, poverty, religious battles, incarceration of London butchers caught selling meat during Lent, reformist clergy dominating the lives of their parishioners and Henry 8th looking to marry Catherine Parr his 6th wife.
Shardlake when we join him has been asked to help a young lad who has become a religious manic and could be burned as a heretic and so has been put in Bedlam.
A serial killer is mutilating his victims and Shardlake becomes involved (along with his assistant Barak and ex-monk Guy) when one of the victims is his good friend, Roger, another lawyer at Lincolns Inn Fields. He is found in a fountain opposite his home, the waters running red.
Shardlake realizes that the murders are following the misreading of the Book of Revelation. There are 7 vials, and will be 7 murders. They believe the killer is possessed by the devil and that if news gets out about these murders it will reflect on the King. But, having promised Rogers wife he will find the killer, he is drawn once again into the politics of the court of Henry 8th.
The investigation has to be carried out in secret and he has to report to Archbishop Cranmer, who is watching the wooing of Catherine Parr keenly as she is known to have reformist sympathies which would suit his Protestant faction at court.

As Colin Dexter said in his review of the earlier books, Sansom makes the past feel like the present.
As I said in the beginning it builds momentum. I found some of the names confusing as some were very similar and I had to keep looking back to see who it was. Plus it mentions a lot of the different religious sects and I couldn't quite keep up with who was fighting for what (I imagine that is very reflective of the time......!) but it didn't detract from my enjoyment of this book