Shardlake's investigations take him on a trail that begins among the backstreet printshops of London but leads him and Jack Barak into the dark and labyrinthine world of the politics of the royal court a world he had sworn never to enter again. Only one page has been found, clutched in the hand of a murdered London printer. She has written 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.īut, although the book was kept secret and hidden inside a locked chest in the Queen's private chamber, it has - inexplicably - vanished. Then, unexpectedly, he is summoned to Whitehall Palace and asked for help by his old patron, the now beleaguered and desperate Queen. Shardlake, still haunted by events aboard the warship Mary Rose the year before, is working on the Cotterstoke Will case, a savage dispute between rival siblings. His Protestant and Catholic councillors are engaged in a final and decisive power struggle whoever wins will control the government of Henry's successor, eight-year-old Prince Edward.Īs heretics are hunted across London, and the radical Protestant Anne Askew is burned at the stake, the Catholic party focus their attack on Henry's sixth wife, Matthew Shardlake's old mentor, Queen Catherine Parr. King Henry VIII is slowly, painfully dying.

The eagerly anticipated new Shardlake novel from the number one bestselling author.

Lamentation cj sansom summary