There’s a funny thing about the CJ Sansom novels. I read the first two or three (no doubt there’s earlier posts on them if I could be bothered to look back), and I thought they were really good. But several of my friends, whose opinion I usually respect, disagreed with me, saying they were nothing more than Agatha Christie set in a different age. Well, yes, but what’s wrong with that?
   I thoroughly enjoyed Dark Fire, with two relatively minor provisos. The first is that everything tied up wonderfully smoothly, with no real loose ends. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, this sometimes irritates me no end, as the author lurches from one plot point to the next, assiduously making sure that everything is tied up. Okay, most of the plot lines and probably all of the main ones need to be tied off, but it can be taken too far. A minor niggle only in the case of Dark Fire. The other proviso is that in a couple of places I thought the plot was too obvious. I won’t tell you what they were, but I got the uncomfortable feeling that Sansom thought he was pulling one (two) over the reader, but, in my case anyway, I thought it was all glaringly obvious so the corresponding denouments fell rather flat.
   But overall, I thought this was an excellent read and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it, despite what my learned friends say.