London, 1540

Will Somers, Henry VIII’s court jester, is adept with a joke, a jape, a rhyme…and with discovering murderers. He also has a love life almost as complicated as the king’s, what with a wife not quite enamored of the idea of his male lovers. He must now reconsider his two-year romance with one of Henry’s courtiers, thinking it best to keep his distance from the newly wedded lord…if only circumstances would allow him to do so!

And then, as if that weren’t enough, King Henry, a widower for the last three years after Queen Jane Seymour’s death, suddenly agrees to strengthen ties with Protestant kingdoms by marrying a gentlewoman from the German court, Anne of Cleves. Not only does it begin unfavorably with Henry displeased with this new match, but the young Maid of Honor Queen Anne was allowed to bring with her from Germany has a secret, and soon it manifests itself into a murder that Will Somers is obliged to solve. And Will does quietly investigate, even as he tries his mightiest to keep this noblewoman from scandal. But farce compounds upon farce when the body of the murdered nobleman keeps Will frustrated as it disappears, reappears, only to disappear once again from court!

This is BOOK FOUR in the King's Fool Mysteries