I don’t often read crime novels, I’m not sure why, my grandmother used to love them, but I could never generate the necessary enthusiasm for finding out whodunit.  Maybe my mind just doesn’t work that way, or I have too much sympathy for the bad guys, either way, I’d have made a terrible detective. So it’s an unusual choice of novel this week that I write about – C J Sansom’s Sovereign that features her sleuth Matthew Shardlake.  I was drawn to it because of the period of history, Tudor England in all its pomp and splendour; a court full of intrigue and danger, the land in a flux of great change and upheaval, yet beginning to erect the pillars of society that we now identify with as forever English. As this is a crime novel I don’t want to give away the plot by discussing the characters too much, because as with any crime novel, they are key to the storyline.  I’ll just say that Shardlake is an interesting and unusual investigator, hunchbacked and often …