Sovereign

In the autumn of 1541, Matthew Shardlake and Jack Barak travel to York ahead of Henry VIII’s royal progress through northern England. Their public task is to assist with petitions and legal business, but Archbishop Thomas Cranmer privately orders them to protect a prisoner whose evidence may expose a dangerous conspiracy. When a glazier connected to the captive is murdered, Shardlake discovers documents that threaten the accepted history of the Tudor succession.

The investigation unfolds beneath the pageantry of Henry’s arrival and the continuing fear left by the Pilgrimage of Grace. York is crowded with courtiers, soldiers, petitioners and men seeking revenge, while the king’s marriage to Catherine Howard begins to unravel. Shardlake must preserve evidence, identify the killer and survive a system in which a question about royal legitimacy can be treated as treason before it is tested as truth.