Spring, 1543. Henry VIII is looking for a sixth wife and tensions are high as the religious factions brace themselves for another shift in the balance of power at court.

Matthew Shardlake, lawyer hero of Sansom’s four previous historical whodunnits, has more than enough to keep him busy. A young boy locked up in Bedlam is in danger of being burned as a heretic and an old friend has been brutally murdered. Shardlake, with his servant Jack Barak and his physician friend Guy Malton, find themselves on the trail of a uniquely terrifying killer who stages his murders with gruesome ingenuity according to different passages in the Book of Revelation. With the streets of London bristling with a religious madness of their own, Shardlake must hold tight to his own principles and clear-eyed sanity.

Rich in period detail, Sansom’s London comes to life on the page, as do his characters as they desperately hunt a monster instantly recognisable to a twenty-first century audience. From the rooms of King’s Inns to wealthy Thameside mansions to the appalling cells of Bedlam in a search for the roots of madness, Sansom’s narrative never flags.