D.V. Bishop Books In Order

Publication Order of Cesare Aldo Books

D.V. Bishop is an award-winning TV dramatist and screenwriter in addition to being a bestselling novelist who is known for his historical mystery fiction.

Given that he has a self-professed love for the Renaissance period and Florence, it was not surprising that these would be the setting for most of his crime fiction works.
It was while he was writing the manuscript for “City of Vengeance” his first Cesare Aldo novel that the Scottish Book Trust granted him the 2017 Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship.
In 2018, Bishop was the winner of the Bloody Scotland international crime fiction festival’s Pitch Perfect Competition.

He made the shortlist for the CWA Historical Dagger in 2023, was the winner of the Best Adult Novel by the NZ Booklovers Award in 2022, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize.
Bishop’s novels have also been longlisted for Best Novel at the Ngaio Marsh Award and the CWA Gold Dagger.

Growing up in New Zealand, D.V. Bishop was a voracious reader who loved the stories and books that took him to other places and worlds that seemed so far away.
It was this that inspired him to begin writing stories initially imitating other people’s characters and books, before he began writing his own.

Bishop had always wanted to write his own stories but since he lived in New Zealand, he did not see many authors who did that for a living.

As such, he became a reporter for a daily newspaper and soon came to hate writing about what other people did rather than his own stories. For this reason, he one day packed all his things into a suitcase and headed to London.
Within two years, he was writing comics and editing. After a decade of juggling writing with editing, he quit to become a freelancer. He got a lot of work on fantasy and science fiction but hated writing other people’s characters.
Feeling trapped, he went back to college attending Edinburgh Napier University where he did a screenwriting master’s degree. Thereafter he began writing for Doctors the BBC TV drama series and plays on BBC Radio.
After doing that for several years, he stepped back to publish his debut novel City of Vengeance.

After he graduated from Edinburgh Napier Univerity with distinction in 2007, he founded the creative writing program, which he would then lead for five years between 2017 – 2022.
Even as he has achieved a lot of success with his novels in the “Cesare Aldo” series of novels, he still teaches how to write genre fiction and creative narrative at Edinburgh Napier University.
“City of Vengeance,” the novel was part of his doctorate program at Lancaster University, England where he studied Creative Writing.

His thesis for his PhD was an interrogation of the death of sleuths who identify as LGBTQ+ in historical mystery works.

D.V. Bishop’s novel “City of Vengeance” is a work set in Italy during the Renaissance period that introduces Cesare Aldo.

At the opening of the novel, the man is living in 1536 Florence, an influential and wealthy state that was then under the rule of Duke Alessandro de Medici.

Aldo is escorting Samuel Levi, a Jewish moneylender who is afraid for his life and manages to repel a vicious track by some bandits. But then his charge is killed in the city soon after his daughter left home following a bitter argument with her father.
Aldo happens to be one of the best investigators in the city and he is charged with locating the killer before the feast of Epiphany, which is just four days away.

Meanwhile, Constable Carlo Strocchi is working on a case involving the brutal murders of Luca Corsini, a young man who had been found wearing an expensive and exquisite woman’s dress.

The work is set at a time when Florence was a hotbed of bordellos, court intrigue, sexual excess, gossip, plots, gossip, political machinations, sharp inequalities, and desperate poverty right beside extreme wealth.
While conducting his investigations, he stumbles upon a dark plot to overthrow the Duke that could put the entire city in danger.

“The Darkest Sin” by D.V. Bishop is a follow-up to the debut novel of the “Cesare Aldo” series of novels. The novel is set in 1537 Florence where Aldo is working on the case of reported intruders at a convent in the northern quarter of the city.
Heading there to investigate, he finds himself in a community harboring dark secrets and divided by bitter rivalries. Things turn even more complicated when he finds a man’s naked body inside the convent.

Upon further investigation, he found several stabs that indicate that the man was stabbed at least 24 times. Unthinkable as it seems, he strongly believes the evidence points to one of the nuns as the culprit.
In the meantime, Constable Carlo Strochi found some human remains that were retrieved from the Arno that matched those of a law enforcement officer who had gone missing in the winter.

The man was known to have many enemies but it is improbable that anyone would dare kill an officer of the most feared criminal court in Florence.

As Strocchi and Also close in on the truth, they will come against some very vicious killers, more dangerous than anything they ever faced before.

D.V. Bishop’s novel “Ritual of Fire” is another fascinating historical thriller set in the Renaissance period.

One night in Florence, a night patrol stumbles upon the body of a rich merchant who it seems had been hanged and his body torched in the main piazza of the city. It does seem that the killer intends to put the feat of God into the citizens of the city.
Four decades earlier, Girolamo Savonarola a puritanical monk had been murdered right there raising feats that his vengeful spirit had risen once again. Could his fanatical followers be planning to revive the dead man’s reign of holy terror?
Cesare Aldo has his theories but he is currently engaged in hunting fugitives and thieves in the countryside of Tuscany, leaving Carlo Strochi to take care of things in Florence.

When another important merchant is murdered in a manner more public than the first, the rich begin fleeing the city and head to the countryside. But Tuscany can be even more dangerous than the city.
It is not long before a scorching heatwave combines with a growing religious fervor driving Florence closer to madness.

Meanwhile, a person is stalking powerful men who made alliances while Savonarola and his brutal followers reigned supreme. Unless Strocci and Aldo can work together to stop the killer, Florence may find itself engulfed in an unimaginable conflagration.