Sansom Is Suddenly No More

Historical crime fiction endured a stinging blow this last weekend with the demise C.J. Sansom, the UK author of seven novels starring hunchbacked 16th-century lawyer and investigator Matthew Shardlake. He was 71 years old. Cause of death is described as “multiple myeloma, a rare cancer that affects bone marrow.” “His publisher confirmed the news,” reports The Guardian, “noting that Sansom died on 27 April, just days before Shardlake, the TV adaptation of Dissolution starring Arthur Hughes and Sean Bean, is released on Disney+ on 1 May.”

The newspaper goes on to recall that Christopher John Sansom, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on December 9, 1952, “was the only child of an English father and a Scottish mother, whom he described as ‘traditional Presbyterian’ and conservative ‘with a small and a capital C’. He developed socialist political leanings in his teens, and went on to study history at Birmingham University, attaining first a B.A. and then a Ph.D, with a thesis on the British Labour party’s policy towards South Africa between the wars. Later, he retrained as a lawyer and worked as a solicitor in Sussex, until he became a full-time writer.”

Sansom’s first novel, Dissolution, introduced Matthew Shardlake back in 2003. The Guardian describes it as “a classic closed-setting mystery set in a fictional monastery in Sussex on the eve of Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. It was an immediate bestseller and was nominated for two categories in the 2003 Crime Writers’ Association Dagger awards.” That book led to a series, the most recent installment of which was Tombland (2018). Sansom was working on an eighth Shardlake novel, Ratcliff, at the time of his passing, but reports are unclear as to how far along he was in its completion.

In addition to the popular Shardlake yarns, Sansom penned a 2006 spy novel, Winter in Madrid, set in 1940 during the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Dominion, a 2012 alternative history thriller. In a column for the Kirkus Reviews Web site, I described Dominion as “a slow-burning but captivating” espionage yarn “that unrolls within a counter-factual world where Great Britain—after negotiating peace with Adolf Hitler following the 1940 Battle of Dunkirk—chafes under an increasingly authoritarian regime locked in goose step with the Nazis, no matter the psychological and human costs of that partnership.”

Sansom scored several award wins over the years, the foremost of which may have been his naming, in 2022, as the Crime Writers’ Association’s Diamond Dagger recipient. I shall miss looking forward to what splendid works of fiction he might produre next.

More Reasons to Flip on the TV

All hail The Killing Times, the British blog that today brings us three terrific batches of news about near-future TV productions.

It was more than a year ago now that we brought you word of streaming service Disney+ greenlighting a series based on C.J. Sansom’s popular novels starring Matthew Shardlake, a barrister who solves crimes and seeks to avoid political intrigues in 16th-century Britain. Today we learned that the four-part drama Shardlake, based on Sansom’s first novel, Dissolution (2003), will debut on May 1.

The program casts Arthur Hughes (from The Innocents and Then Barbara Met Alan) as Shardlake, a hunchback lawyer protagonist “with an acute sense of justice and one of the few honest men in a world beset with scheming and plots.” Sean Bean (World on Fire, Snowpiercer) will play Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to King Henry VIII and Shardlake’s employer, while Anthony Boyle (The Plot Against America, Masters of the Air) appears as Jack Barak, who assists Shardlake ... but may also be spying on him for Cromwell.

Here’s The Killing Times’ synopsis of the show’s plot:

Shardlake’s sheltered life as a lawyer is turned upside down when Cromwell instructs him to investigate the murder of one of his commissioners at a monastery in the remote [and fictitious] town of Scarnsea. The commissioner was gathering evidence to close the monastery and it is now imperative for Cromwell’s own political survival that Shardlake both solves the murder and closes the monastery. He leaves Shardlake in no doubt that failure is not an option.

Cromwell insists that he is accompanied by Jack Barak to Scarnsea, where the duo are met with hostility, suspicion and paranoia by the monks who fear for their future and will seemingly stop at nothing to preserve their order.

Here’s a 90-second trailer for Shardlake:



The Killing Times also reports that two more series of The Night Manager, which premiered in 2016 and was adapted from John le Carré’s 1993 novel of the same title, have been commissioned by BBC One. Tom Hiddleston will return to his role as Jonathan Pine, a former British soldier turned hotel night manager who, in the original tale, became involved with illegal arm sales. Adds Deadline: “The Night Manager Season 2 will begin filming later this year and will pick up with Hiddleston’s Jonathan Pine eight years after the explosive finale of Season 1, going beyond the original book ... Additional plot details are being kept under wraps and there is not yet confirmation as to whether [executive producer Hugh] Laurie’s Richard Roper, who was last seen in the back of a paddy wagon driven by arms buyers who were not best pleased with him, will return to star.”

Finally, we have further details about a second Death in Paradise spin-off, Return to Paradise. This show will be set in Sydney, Australia, and feature Anna Samson (Jack Irish, Home and Away) as tenacious Detective Inspector Mackenzie Clarke, “an Australian ex-pat who’s made a name for herself in London’s Metropolitan Police for cracking uncrackable murder cases. When she is accused of tampering with evidence, Clarke returns to Australia, back to the last place she ever wanted to be—her hometown of Dolphin Cove. Having fled the town six years ago, infamously leaving her ex-fiancé Glenn [Tai Hara, also from Home and Away] at the altar, Clarke is not welcome there. But with no other job options, and a unique talent for solving a mystery, no matter how challenging, a reluctant ‘Mack’ joins the team at Dolphin Cove Police Station.” We’ll see whether she settles into her new situation as comfortably as DI Humphrey Goodman (Kris Marshall) did in the previous Death in Paradise offshoot, Beyond Paradise, fresh episodes of which are currently rolling out in the States on BritBox.

Frustratingly, launch dates for Return to Paradise and the sophomore season of The Night Manager have not yet been announced.

Tudor Tales Coming to TV

Let’s balance out that last item with some potentially fantastic news: Deadline reports that “Disney+ is ready to give the greenlight to an adaptation of C.J. Sansom’s bestselling Shardlake novels, depicting an unlikely detective working under Henry VIII’s reign.”

As most readers of this page probably know, British solicitor-turned-author Sansom has spent much of the last 20 years concocting mystery yarns (some of them quite hefty) around a hunchbacked 16th-century lawyer named Matthew Shardlake. The character was introduced in 2003’s Dissolution, and in 2018 the series added its seventh installment, Tombland. An eighth book, Ratcliff, was once rumored to be due out at the end of 2022, but more recent suggestions are that it will appear, instead, sometime later this year.

Deadline goes on to say that Disney+’s Shardlake “will shoot in the UK this year and sources said it could comprise four episodes.”

(Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)

Sansom Joins an Elite Contingent

British historical crime novelist C.J. Sansom has been named as this year’s recipient of “the highest honour in British crime writing, the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Diamond Dagger.” That announcement was made in an e-mail message earlier this morning.

Sansom is, of course, best known for penning an award-winning series starring hunchbacked 16th-century lawyer Matthew Shardlake (Dissolution, Dark Fire, Tombland). However, he also composed the 2006 thriller Winter in Madrid and the excellent, 2012 alternative-history spy yarn Dominion. As CWA chair Maxim Jakubowski enthuses in a statement: “C.J. Sansom has proven himself to be the modern master of the historical thriller, regardless of periods. Equally at ease evoking sixteenth-century England, Spain in the aftermath of its Civil War or even an alternate post-WW2 Britain, he weaves a web of compelling reality around his characters and brings the past to life like no other, making him a splendid and deserved addition to the prestigious ranks of Diamond Dagger winners.”

Numbering among those previous recipients are Ruth Rendell, John le Carré, Ann Cleeves, Peter Lovesey, Ed McBain, Sue Grafton, Martin Edwards, P.D. James, and Andrew Taylor. Sansom will officially be given the Diamond Dagger during a ceremony in June.

Pierce’s Picks: “Dominion”

A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

Dominion, by C.J. Sansom (Mantle UK):
Taking another detour from his Matthew Shardlake Tudor detective series--as he did with the melancholy Winter in Madrid (2008)--Sansom gives us a what-if spy adventure set in 1952. A dozen years have passed since Great Britain surrendered to the greater military might of Nazi Germany, though World War II continues to rage on in Russia. Britons are chafing under the authoritarian regulations imposed by their new government, and they’re worried by reports of atrocious acts taking place in their midst. However, Winston Churchill’s Resistance movement appears to be expanding, and it may have discovered a way to tip the balance of power in its favor. Much depends, though, on the daring efforts of a civil servant turned Resistance spy, David Fitzgerald, who has been assigned to help a scientist, trapped in a Birmingham mental hospital, flee the country. Fitzgerald soon finds himself hiding from capture, together with a group of other Resistance activists, in a London menaced by a hazardous air-pollution event, the notorious Great Smog of ’52. Meanwhile, Fitzgerald’s wife, Sarah, faces her own terrors, and one of the Gestapo’s most notorious manhunters is hot on both their heels. Sansom’s characters are given dimensions and detailed histories enough to make them credible, and in Dominion the author has cobbled together enough real events from 1950s Britain with his own imaginings to make readers believe, if only now and then, that the story presented in these pages could actually have happened. Fans of Len Deighton’s own alternative thriller, SS-GB (1978), may see similarities in Dominion, but they shouldn’t be disappointed with this new novel. No U.S. release of Dominion has been announced.

READ MORE: “C.J. Sansom on the Dangers of Nationalism”
(Mulholland Books).