Tombland

In the spring of 1549, Matthew Shardlake is serving Lady Elizabeth when she sends him to Norwich to investigate the murder of a distant relation from her mother’s family. He travels with the young lawyer Nicholas Overton and finds a city divided by enclosure, falling wages, religious change and hostility towards local landowners. A second killing complicates the case just as unrest spreads through the Norfolk countryside.

Robert Kett’s rebels gather on Mousehold Heath and take control of Norwich, drawing Shardlake into a movement whose grievances he increasingly understands even as its position becomes more dangerous. The government of the child king Edward VI prepares to suppress the rising while Protector Somerset’s policies lose authority. Shardlake must complete the murder enquiry, protect those in his care and decide whether loyalty to law requires obedience to a regime that has failed the people demanding justice.