Yahoo News CJ Sansom, author of Shardlake series, dies aged 71
CJ Sansom, the popular crime author who created the character Matthew Shardlake, has died aged 71.
The historical novelist, whose full name was Christopher John Sansom, died on Saturday, according to his publisher Pan Macmillan.
His Tudor murder-mystery novels have recently been adapted to the screen by Disney+, with the first season to be released on Wednesday.
Sansom’s first novel, Dissolution, featuring the lawyer-turned-detective Shardlake, dubbed the “Tudor Morse”, was published 21 years ago.
He wrote six further novels featuring Shardlake and two standalone historical novels, Winter in Madrid, and Dominion.
Sansom recently won the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for his outstanding contribution to the genre.
There are more than three million copies of his books in print, according to his publisher.
Sansom ‘gave joy to millions’
Lucy Hale, managing director of Pan Macmillan, said: “We are immensely saddened to hear of Chris’s death. It has been our profound privilege and pleasure to be Chris’s publisher from the very beginning, and Pan Macmillan will continue to celebrate him and introduce many more readers to his extraordinary body of work for many years to come. We are all thinking of his friends at this very difficult time.”
Maria Rejt, the author’s longtime editor and publisher, said he was working on a new Shardlake novel, Ratcliff, when he died.
Ms Rejt said Sansom was a “wonderfully talented writer who gave joy to millions”.
She said: “An intensely private person, Chris wished from the very start only to be published quietly and without fanfare.
“But he always took immense pleasure in the public’s enthusiastic responses to his novels and worked tirelessly on each book, never wanting to disappoint a single reader.
“He was working on his new Shardlake novel, Ratcliff, when he died but his worsening health made progress painfully slow: his meticulous historical research and his writing were always so important to him. I shall miss him hugely, not only as a wonderfully talented writer who gave joy to millions, but as a dear friend of enormous compassion and integrity.”
Christopher John Sansom was born in 1952 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He studied at Birmingham University earning a BA and then a PhD in history.
Sansom granted executive producer Stevie Lee the TV rights to his first novel, Dissolution, in 2003, but the Disney project has taken Lee more than two decades to complete.
