Dark Fire by C. J. Sansom - Top Flight Historical Mystery

From the acclaimed author of Dissolution comes a new sixteenth-century thriller featuring hunchback lawyer Matthew Shardlake. In 1540, during the reign of Henry VIII, Shardlake is asked to help a young girl accused of murder. She refuses to speak in her defense even when threatened with torture. But just when the case seems lost, Thomas Cromwell, the king's feared vicar general, offers Shardlake two more weeks to prove his client's innocence. In exchange, Shardlake must find a lost cache of Dark Fire, a legendary weapon of mass destruction. What ensues is a page-turning adventure, filled with period detail and history.

Top Flight Historical Mystery
This second book in the Shardlake series is even better than the excellent debut, Dissolution (which you should certainly read first). Our lawyer-hero returns a couple of years later, and the outstanding, you-are-there historical fiction with him. Sansom not only does an outstanding job with the 16th century setting and detail, but goes beyond standard historical fiction by giving you a sense of the constant change and upheaval during Henry VIII's reign. You get a sense of how different 1540, the year of this book, was from 1538, and how potentially different it could be from 1541. In short, great historical fiction on both the micro and macro level.

What raises this book above the first in the series (though you should definitely read them in order) is Sansom's greater mastery of the whodunit form. In this book he develops sidekicks for the hero and adapts to other conventions of the classic form that lifts the book up another level. Plus, it is a twofer on the mystery side: with two independent puzzles for our hero to solve.

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