num_pages: 501
description:         It is 1540, and Henry VIII has been on the throne for thirty-one years when Matthew Shardlake, the lawyer renowned as "the sharpest hunchback in the courts of England," is pressed to help a friend's young niece who is charged with murder.         Despite threats of torture and death by the rack, the girl is inexplicably silent. Shardlake is about to lose her case when he is suddenly granted a reprieve - one that will ensnare him again in the dangerous schemes of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's feared vicar general.          In exchange for two more weeks to investigate the murder, Shardlake accepts Cromwell's assignment to find a lost cache of Dark Fire, an ancient weapon of mass destruction. Cromwell, out of favor since Henry's disastrous marriage to Anne of Cleves, is relying on Shardlake's discovery to save his position at court, which is rife with conspiracy
language: English
title: Dark Fire
titlecomplete: Dark Fire (Matthew Shardlake, #2)
characters: Thomas Howard, Thomas Cromwell, Richard Riche, Matthew Shardlake, Jack Barak, Guy Malton
genres: Historical Mystery, British Literature, Historical, Mystery, Tudor Period, Thriller, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Mystery Thriller, Crime
ratings_count: 27321
places: United Kingdom, London, England
series: Matthew Shardlake
awards: awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award
publisher: Penguin Group