With the Shardlake series . . . Sansom has surely established himself as one of the best novelists around * Spectator * When it comes to intriguing Tudor-based narratives, Hilary Mantel has a serious rival . . . A Scottish historian who had a career in law before turning to fiction, Sansom finds an ideal protagonist in Matthew Shardlake, the humane hunchbacked lawyer-sleuth, in his Tudor novels * Sunday Times * Shardlake's back and better than ever . . . Lamentation, like its predecessors, is a triumph both as detective fiction and as a novel -- Independent on Sunday on Lamentation As always, Sansom conjures the atmosphere, costumes and smells of Tudor London with vigour, from the gilded halls of Whitehall Palace to the dungeons of the Tower . . . A shocking climax promises to mark a new chapter for Shardlake, and for England -- Observer on Lamentation