Dissolution

Its place in Matthew Shardlake

Dissolution is book 1 in the Matthew Shardlake series. It is followed by Dark Fire. See the full Matthew Shardlake reading order.

C. J. Sansom's Shardlake novels follow Matthew Shardlake, a hunchbacked lawyer in the reign of Henry VIII, who investigates murder and conspiracy against the backdrop of Tudor England's most dangerous decades. Dissolution opens in 1537 with Shardlake sent to investigate a killing at a monastery on the eve of Henry's dissolution of the monasteries, and the series follows him across the following decade through the fall of Thomas Cromwell, the king's later marriages, the Boulogne campaign, and finally, in Tombland…