As Henry VIII lies on his deathbed, an incendiary manuscript threatens
to tear his court apart.
Summer, 1546. King Henry VIII is slowly, painfully dying. His Protestant
and Catholic councilors are engaged in a final and decisive power
struggle; whoever wins will control the government. As heretics are
hunted across London, and radical Protestants are burned at the stake,
the Catholic party focuses its attack on Henry's sixth wife -- and
Matthew Shardlake's old mentor -- Queen Catherine Parr.
Shardlake, still haunted by his narrow escape from death the year
before, steps into action when the beleaguered and desperate Queen
summons him to Whitehall Palace to help her recover a dangerous
manuscript. The Queen has authored a confessional book, Lamentation of
a Sinner, so radically Protestant that if it came to the King's
attention it could bring both her and her sympathizers crashing down.
Although the secret book was kept hidden inside a locked chest in the
Queen's private chamber, it has inexplicably vanished. Only one page has
been recovered -- clutched in the hand of a murdered London printer.
Shardlake's investigations take him on a trail that begins among the
backstreet printshops of London, but leads him and his trusty assistant
Jack Barak into the dark and labyrinthine world of court politics, a
world Shardlake swore never to enter again. In this crucible of power
and ambition, Protestant friends can be as dangerous as Catholic
enemies, and those with shifting allegiances can be the most dangerous
of all.
