Dark Fire by C J Sansom

I just finished reading Dark Fire by C J Sansom. Since I love historic books, I really liked this one. It was well written and well researched (at least it seems that way, I can’t say I have enough knowledge to be absolutely sure).

The main characters are likeable enough (at least Matthew Shardlake, the ‘main’ main character). There’s a new guy working as his assistant, and he’s a bit brusque and rude at times, but after a while I got more used to him. It turns out he had good personality traits too.

Matthew Shardlake is once again (like in book 1) forced to help Cromwell with an important matter, but he also investigates another case. The latter is a very dark and serious case, and I must admit that I found it hard to read about, since it involves something I have a lot of trouble handling. To avoid any spoilers I won’t say more about that or for that matter the Cromwell case either.

It’s just a very interesting book from a turbulent time that I haven’t read all that much about in the past so it was fun to learn more about it.

I read the first book several years ago, in Swedish translation and I found it rather dull then (despite being a historic book), but maybe that was due to the translation or – I don’t know. This just seemed a lot more interesting, despite the upsetting subject matter.