If you enjoyed Dissolution, you’ll love
the next gripping instalment in the acclaimed
Shardlake series
SUMMER, 1540
It is the hottest summer of the sixteenth century. Matthew Shardlake, believing himself out of favour with Thomas Cromwell, has spent the past three years trying to maintain his legal practice and keep a low profile. But his involvement with a murder case, defending a girl accused of brutally killing her young cousin, brings him once again into contact with the king’s chief minister – and leads to a new assignment . . .
The secret of Greek Fire, the legendary substance with which the Byzantines destroyed the Arab navies, has been lost for centuries. Now an official of the Court of Augmentations has discovered the formula in the library of a dissolved London monastery. When Shardlake is sent to recover it, he finds the official and his alchemist brother brutally murdered – the formula has disappeared, just days before it is to be demonstrated before the King himself.
Together with Jack Barak, an unorthodox assistant forced on him by Cromwell, Shardlake must follow the trail of Greek Fire across Tudor London, while trying at the same time to prove his young client’s innocence. But very soon he discovers nothing is as it seems . . .
Out now.
An extract follows here . . .