Events will converge on board one of the King's great warships, primed for battle in Portsmouth harbour. The emerging mysteries around the young ward, and the events that destroyed Ellen's family nineteen years before, involve Shardlake in reunions both with an old friend and an old enemy close to the throne. Asked to investigate claims of "monstrous wrongs" committed against a young ward of the court, which have already involved one mysterious death, Shardlake and his assistant Barak journey to Portsmouth.Once arrived, Shardlake and Barak find themselves in a city preparing to become a war zone and Shardlake takes the opportunity to also investigate the mysterious past of Ellen Fettiplace, a young woman incarcerated in the Bedlam. The King has debased the currency to pay for the war, and England is in the grip of soaring inflation and economic crisis.Meanwhile Matthew Shardlake is given an intriguing legal case by an old servant of Queen Catherine Parr. As the English fleet gathers at Portsmouth, the country raises the largest militia army it has ever seen. Henry VIII's invasion of France has gone badly wrong, and a massive French fleet is preparing to sail across the Channel. Best for historical sticklers, military fans and encyclopedists.
Sansom's fifith spellbinding mystery inthe Shardlake series.Summer, 1545. The characters are sympathetic and the quirks of the historic courts interesting enough, but the plot is so tangled in the tedium of troop movements and provisions that it drags on longer than Catherine and Henry’s marriage.
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