RevelationSpring, 1543. King Henry VIII is wooing Lady Catherine Parr, whom he wants for his sixth wife. But this time the object of his affections is resisting. 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. Should he be released

Anna is married to another man

Tom joins up as 'rescue man'

And when a bandit raid wipes out their home

Meet Albert Samson - a detective in the tradition of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade

becomes a successful attraction

Ginger and Bertie to rescue Cozens

a passing trawler hauls in a gruesome catch - the head of one of the missing fishermen

to the minute-by-minute account of the siege and rescue

Spoils is a harrowing and incredibly powerful debut which shows war in all its complexity and viciousness and which attempts to humanise it through extraordinary and conflicted characters

and respectable

And about the letters he's been getting

Pearse has a big future ahead of her