King Henry VIII is wooing Lady Catherine Parr, whom he wants for his sixth wife Archbishop Cranmer and the embattled Protestant faction at court are watching keenly, for Lady Catherine is known to have reformist sympathies Matthew Shardlake, meanwhile, is working on the case of a teenage boy, a religious maniac locked in the Bedlam hospital for the insane When an old friend is horrifically murdered Shardlake promises his widow, for whom he has long had complicated feelings, to bring the killer to justice His search leads him to both Cranmer and Catherine Parr - and with the dark prophecies of the Book of Revelation