The Twilight Queen

by Jeri Westerson Book 2 in the King’s Fool Mysteries series.

First published 2024

Amazon

3.8(124)

Greenwich Palace, April 1536. Anne Boleyn summons Will Somers after a dead man is discovered in her chamber, a scandal that could be catastrophic for a queen whose position is already collapsing. Will removes the immediate danger and begins asking who the victim was, how the body entered guarded royal rooms and whether the murder was intended to implicate Anne. Henry VIII’s attention is shifting towards Jane Seymour, while Thomas Cromwell and other factions at court pursue their own interests, so even a private crime can become evidence in a treason narrative.

The novel is set in the final weeks before Anne Boleyn’s arrest and execution, when Henry’s second marriage had become a political crisis. Court households were crowded spaces governed by access, rank and patronage, yet rumours could move faster than official information. Will Somers’s historical role as licensed jester gives the fictional investigation a credible path through those barriers. Westerson uses the murder to dramatise the atmosphere of Anne’s fall without reducing the queen’s fate to a whodunit, keeping the larger machinery of Henry VIII’s court in view.