Dark Fire

London, 1540. Matthew Shardlake is defending Elizabeth Wentworth, a silent young woman accused of murdering her cousin, when Thomas Cromwell offers him a dangerous bargain. If Shardlake and Cromwell’s agent Jack Barak recover the formula for Greek Fire, an incendiary weapon claimed to survive from the ancient world, Cromwell will secure more time before Elizabeth is condemned. Their search leads through alchemists’ workshops, monastic ruins and the commercial underworld of a city suffering through an oppressive summer.

The enquiry takes place while Henry VIII rejects his marriage to Anne of Cleves and Cromwell’s political enemies close around the minister who arranged it. Shardlake must solve two crimes under a deadline set by both the court and the gallows, while Barak’s divided loyalties make their partnership uncertain. The novel connects legal injustice and scientific fraud to the abrupt destruction of a statesman whose service to the king can no longer protect him.