Revelation

Only the wonderfully rich detail with which the author brings to life characters and settings lets us know that we are not in modern times, but in 1543 – and even this evocation of a filthy overcrowded London thronged with beggars and prostitutes seems uncomfortably close to present day reality . . . Mingling lightly worn erudition with pacy plotting, this is an utterly compelling read.

The Times

Historical mysteries are all the rage, but Sansom’s are in a class of their own. His sheer narrative skill is matchless.

Mail on Sunday

C. J. Sansom’s novels, set amid the stench and scandal of the 16th century, are impressive both for their intricate detail and serpentine plot twists.

Independent Books of the Year

Terror stalks Tudor London in this latest pungently atmospheric novel from the master of the historical murder mystery.

Sunday Times Culture

He has created a hugely detailed and wonderfully plausible picture of life in 16th Century London as religious schisms threaten to tear the country apart but he sweetens the pot in this tale of a Tudor serial killer by having his characters talking in modern English. A very superior entertainment.

Mail on Sunday

There’s expert historical crime to be found in . . . C. J. Sansom’s Revelation, perhaps the first Tudor serial-killer mystery, which also illuminates 16th century attitudes to madness and fundamentalism.

Guardian - What to pack with your beach towel

I’ve just returned from a week in the sun when the pick of my holiday reads was C. J. Sansom’s marvellous Dark Fire. It’s a thrilling quest novel set in Tudor London and the second in Sansom’s historical series starring the hunchback lawyer Matthew Shardlake. If, as I’ve been told, the next two books (Sovereign and Revelation) are even better I have further treats in store.

Independent on Sunday summer reads

The outstanding new whodunnit featuring Tudor lawyer Matthew Shardlake.

Sunday Times 100 Best Holiday Reads

Compulsively gripping Tudor murder mysteries . . . As a plot with a clutch of steel pulls you through dramatic twists and turns and vivid, knowledgeable, widely diverse scenes of Tudor life, you watch Shardlake discern a terrible pattern in the butchery.

Sunday Times Culture

The fourth in C. J. Sansom’s superb Tudor detective series . . . As with the previous books, Samson’s narrative is highly visual and Revelation will clearly make a white-knuckle film . . . don’t expect to put the book down until you’ve seen it through to the apocalyptic finale.

Observer

The twists and turns of Sansom’s novel are steeped in history, but feel as fresh and immediate as a present-day murder mystery.

Time Out

This ambitious panorama of a book, the fourth in Sansom’s series set in not-so-merrie Tudor England, more than lives up to the promise of the previous three . . . With wonderful scene-setting . . . plus some deft plotting, Revelation is an absorbing and thought-provoking window on the Tudor world.

Guardian

Sansom’s powerful and seductive historicism militates against the particular and the personal, or, indeed, the naturalistic. His vivid Tudor London is larger than life, just as we fondly imagine it to be: dangerous, dirty, noisy, picturesque and above all, different.

Times Literary Supplement

The fourth in a series of historical thrillers that are to Ellis Peters what P.D. James is to Agatha Christie. It works as a stand-alone novel, but aficionados will feel they are rejoining a party, catching up with old friends.

The Times

CJ Sansom’s books are arguably the best Tudor novels going

Sunday Times