Book cover of City of Vengeance

Book description

Shortlisted for the 2021 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize and longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger 2021.

City of Vengeance is an explosive debut novel in an historical thriller series by D. V. Bishop, set in Renaissance Florence.

'An impressive and immersive debut set in a beautifully realized sixteenth-century Florence'…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked City of Vengeance as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I had the privilege of meeting D.V. Bishop at Bristol CrimeFest, and something that inspired me to pick up his book was the interest he showed in escapism.

It’s so easy in historical fiction for some writers to dedicate their focus to research that sometimes the story becomes secondary. Not with Bishop’s book. The adventure, tension, and anticipation are all expertly written.

With a complex hero, Aldo, hiding his homosexuality at a time when it was illegal, this tension is brought into the conflict of the narrative as he races to find a killer in Florence in 1536.

This was…

I recently had the pleasure of meeting D V Bishop at CrimeFest in Bristol, and his passion for his stories truly comes through in person.

After picking it up for a friend whose favorite place in the world is Florence, where the book is set, I couldn’t resist reading it myself, and oh, I am glad I did. Three books into the series, and it’s hard to put down. Cesare Aldo is a hero that is mysterious and resilient – a man trying to hide his sexuality in a world where it’s a crime – as he investigates murders in…

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