But his quiet working life is shattered when his old friend Roger Elliard is found with his throat cut in Lincoln's Inn fountain.
The year is 1543 and the hunchbacked lawyer and amateur detective, Matthew Shardlake, has sworn not to involve himself in any more affairs of state. As London's Bishop Bonner prepares a purge of Protestants Shardlake, together with his assistant, Jack Barak, and his friend, Guy Malton, follow the trail of a series of horrific murders that shake them to the core, and which are already bringing frenzied talk of witchcraft and a demonic possession - for what else would the Tudor mind make of a serial killer. His search leads him to both Cranmer and Catherine Parr - and with the dark prophecies of the Book of Revelation. Should he be released to his parents, when his terrifying actions could lead to him being burned as a heretic? When an old friend is horrifically murdered Shardlake promises his widow, for whom he has long had complicated feelings, to bring the killer to justice. Matthew Shardlake, meanwhile, is working on the case of a teenage boy, a religious maniac locked in the Bedlam hospital for the insane.
Archbishop Cranmer and the embattled Protestant faction at court are watching keenly, for Lady Catherine is known to have reformist sympathies.
But this time the object of his affections is resisting. King Henry VIII is wooing Lady Catherine Parr, whom he wants for his sixth wife.
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