
Following on from Dissolution & Dark Fire Sovereign is the third title in C J Sansom's bestselling Shardlake series As dramatized on BBC Radio 4's 15 Minute Drama series Autumn 1541 King Henry VIII has set out on a spectacular Progress to the North to attend an extravagant submission of his rebellious subjects in York Already in the city are lawyer Matthew Shardlake & his assistant Jack Barak As well as assisting with legal work processing petitions to the King Shardlake has reluctantly undertaken a special mission for the Archbishop Cranmer
- to ensure the welfare of an important but dangerous conspirator being returned to London for interrogation But the murder of a local glazier involves Shardlake in deeper mysteries connected not only to the prisoner in York Castle but to the royal family itself & when Shardlake & Barak stumble upon a cache of secret papers which could threaten the Tudor throne a chain of events unfolds that will lead to Shardlake facing the most terrifying fate of the age ' Sansom is a master storyteller' Guardian' So compulsive that until you reach its final page you'll have to be almost physically prised away from it' Sunday Times' Deeper stronger & subtler than The Name of the Rose' Independent on Sunday