Dark
Fire
Matthew
Shardlake Tudor Mystery, No 2
By
C J Sansom
Matthew
Shardlake, the gloomy, hunchbacked lawyer from Dissolution, is back
to solve another case. Not so fresh from his misadventures in Scarnsea,
he hopes that he won't have to work for Thomas Cromwell again, but
is proved thoroughly wrong. As the king's interest in Anne of Cleves
wanes, so does Cromwell's power, and he wants to make one last-ditch
attempt to please the fickle monarch. The formula for Greek Fire,
the secret weapon of the ancient world has been found and this is
just the stuff to confound the king's enemies - but is it the real
thing? Matthew has his own agenda - to prove the innocence of a
young girl accused of killing her cousin - and only twelve days
to find and test the formula.
Dissolution
was a highly acclaimed book, appealing not only to historical crime
buffs but also to mainstream readers and those with more literary
taste. However, if you like thrilling tales of derring-do with a
breathless plot and heroic protagonist, you might well find this
wanting as the misanthropic Matthew plods slowly around London,
often missing more clues than he finds, and not having much of an
idea how to go about investigating anything.
But
this is not a procedural, and neither is it a fantasy, so though
you may yawn at the pace, you can loudly applaud the realism. Short
of a time machine, it is probably impossible to get more under the
skin of the Reformation. This was a frightening time when the comforts
of the old religion had been stripped away and a capricious king
had long since stopped being "Bluff King Hal." Matthew
is nobody's hero, but comes across as a very real person who deals
with an unfamiliar situation as we might ourselves - by feeling
his way. Uncompromising and gritty, this weighty tome could be used
to prop open a door, but you might be better off just reading it.
I'm
sure there will be a third in the series.
Reviews
of other titles in this series
Dissolution
Dark
Fire
|
The
Book |
Macmillan UK |
5
November 2004 |
Hardback |
1405005440 |
Historical
Crime [1540 London] |
More
at Amazon.com US
|| UK |
The
Reviewer |
Rachel A Hyde |
Reviewed
2005 |
|