Anthony Blanke, Cardinal Wolsey’s trumpeter and lower groom of the outer chamber, knows his place. His late father – who had once had a similar job – drummed it into him. Meddle with nothing, he told him. And never mind saying anything critical, don’t even think it.

This is sound advice and, for a black man near the centre of power in Catholic Tudor England, potentially life-saving. But when a petitioner at the cardinal’s palace is found murdered and Blanke finds himself a prime suspect, it becomes hard to follow. Although he is not arrested for murder, he only has a short time to clear his name, and find out who really did kill the petitioner. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he also seems to be leaving a trail of murdered corpses wherever he goes...

Veerapen, who teaches English Literature at the University of Strathclyde and has already written three trilogies set between 1542 and 1606, is clearly at home with the social intricacies of life at the English court. The language is spot-on (as you’d expect from someone with a PhD in Elizabethan slander) and so is every other kind of background detail, from the contents of a Tudor poultice to the use of cymbals in the darkened church services and advice about why you should make sure you were never seen entering an apothecary’s shop.

Blanke is an engaging protagonist. Because he follows his father’s advice (John Blanke was, apparently, a real person even if his son is fictitious) and never voices any kind of criticism, his often subversive or cynical thoughts are given in italics. His mixed-race background isn’t overplayed, and although it causes a certain amount of suspicion, he is well-treated by Wolsey, and then by Sir Thomas More (who here is more of a wise, humane lawyer than the priggish hypocrite Hilary Mantel saw him as in her Wolf Hall trilogy).

Like Mantel, Veerapen is able to show the deadly realities of Tudor court life. True power like Wolsey’s means that the odd murder can be covered up, but even so there are limits. A sudden unexplained death so close to the King cannot be allowed to stand, and can always be used by rivals to undermine the cardinal’s authority. The consequences of that could very easily be fatal: Henry VIII is reckoned to have executed some 57,000 of his subjects.

The problem, however, isn’t in the detail, the central character or the setting. The multi-murder plot relies too much on coincidence, turning up corpses like a magician doing card tricks rather than as part of a credible, immersive drama. If Veerapen can sort that out for his next book, I for one won’t blank Blanke.

Of Judgement Fallen, by Steven Veerapen, Polygon, £9.99

Book review: Of Judgement Fallen, by Steven Veerapen