Ceremonial murder has returned to Florence, and only two men
can end the destruction.
Florence. Summer, 1538: A night patrol finds a wealthy merchant hanged and set ablaze in the city’s main square. More than mere murder, this killing is intended to put the fear of God into Florence. Forty years earlier, puritanical monk Girolamo Savonarola was executed the same way. Does this new killing mean his fanatical disciples are reviving the monk’s regime of holy terror?
I'm pleased to welcome author David Bishop to The Writing Desk:
Growing up in Aotearoa New Zealand I always wanted to visit Florence. It had a magical quality for me long before I was ever able to go there. During the late 1990s I was in a remaindered bookshop round the corner from the British Museum and stumbled on an academic monograph about the criminal justice system in late Renaissance Florence. The book fell open at a particular page and one sentence leapt out at me. It said the criminal justice system in this period was roughly comparable to a modern police force. That was the lightbulb moment that connects murder mysteries and this period in the city’s history. I spent the next twenty years researching Renaissance Florence and have been fortunate to visit the city several times before I started writing my Cesare Aldo novels.
What challenges did this present to you as a writer?
Renaissance Florence was in many ways a very bureaucratic place that kept written records of its many aspects, much of which have survived the past 500 years. Alas, I can’t speak or read Italian, despite my efforts with Duolingo, but others have gone before me translating and analysing this vast archive. That means much of my research has been text-based using translations and secondary sources. I have two double-stacked bookcases groaning with reference materials.
But reading only gets you so far, especially when many of those alive at the time – most women, people who weren’t literate, citizens marginalised by their faith or sexuality – did not write about their lives. That presents another challenge as I enjoy writing about those much of the accepted history of a period ignores. Happily there are academics and researchers who now look into these neglected parts of Renaissance Florentine society which is very helpful.
Several years of lockdown were challenging for everyone, of course, but they’ve meant I haven’t been able to get back to Florence since 2019. If you want to capture a real place and immerse the reader in that location, it is hugely helpful to walk the streets and alleys. I hope to return to Florence later this year and can’t wait to be there again.
Was the series always planned as a trilogy or have we not hear the last of Cesare Aldo?
The third Cesare Aldo novel Ritual of Fire is being published on June 1st by Pan Macmillan in hardback, audiobook and ebook, but it is definitely not the last in this series. I am already writing the fourth Cesare Aldo novel and – if readers enjoy that too – will get the chance to create more cases for the character to investigate. The fourth book in the series now has a working title, but I’m not allowed to reveal that yet. Sorry!
What advice do you have for writers of historical thrillers?
If you don’t love research and has a genuine fascination for the period where your stories are set, writing historical fiction is liable to seem like a homework chore. Be prepared to do far more research than will ever (or should ever) end up in one of your stories. Just because you spend time learning about something, doesn’t mean it deserves to appear on the page. I devoted a whole day to discovering all I could about growing flax in Renaissance Tuscany as I thought it might be relevant for the countryside sections in Ritual of Fire. None of that ended up in the novel! It doesn’t matter that you’ve suffered for your art, don’t make readers suffer too.
What are you planning to write next?
I’m writing the fourth Cesare Aldo novel right now, hopefully for publication in 2024. I’ll be out of contract after that so we shall see. I have many more cases for Aldo to solve, but there are ideas for standalones bubbling away at the back of my brain that might need unleashing. There is a new character coming in the fourth Aldo book that could well be the protagonist of a spin-off story, she’s that much fun to write. Not to mention the fact I wrote City of Vengeance (my first Aldo novel) as part of a Creative Writing PhD. The book has won awards and been out in paperback for more than a year, but my doctorate remains unfinished. I should probably knuckle down to that sooner rather than later!
David Bishop
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About the Author
(photo credit: Felix Mosse)
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