Autumn, 1546. King Henry VIII is slowly, painfully dying. His Protestant and Catholic councillors prepare for a final and decisive power struggle; whoever wins will control the government. The Catholics decide to focus their attack on Henry's sixth wife, the Protestant Queen Catherine Parr. As Catherine begins to lose the king's favour, she turns to the shrewd, hunchbacked lawyer Matthew Shardlake to contain a potentially fatal secret. The queen has written a confessional book, Lamentation of a Sinner, a memoir so radical that if it came to the king's attention, it could bring her and her courtly sympathizers to ruination. 2015.