Ritual of Fire

From The Crime Writers' Association Historical Dagger Winning Author

By: D. V. Bishop

Narrated by: Mark Meadows

The Crime Writers’ Association Historical Dagger Winning Author

Winner of the 2024 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel

‘It’s hard to think of a better guide than D. V. Bishop to the brutality and glamour of Renaissance Florence’ – Andrew Taylor, bestselling author of The Royal Secret

‘Fast becoming a serious rival to C. J. Sansom and S. J. Parris’ – Historical Novel Society

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?

Cesare Aldo is busy hunting thieves in the Tuscan countryside, leaving Constable Carlo Strocchi to investigate the killing. When another merchant is burned alive in public, the rich start fleeing to their country estates. But the Tuscan hills can also be dangerous.

Growing religious fervour and a scorching heatwave drives the city ever closer to madness. Meanwhile, someone is stalking those powerful men who forged lifelong bonds in the dark days of Savonarola.

Unless Aldo and Strocchi work together, all of Florence will be consumed by an inferno of death and destruction.

Ceremonial murder has returned to Florence. Only two men can end the destruction. Featuring Officer Cesare Aldo, Ritual of Fire is an atmospheric historical thriller by D. V. Bishop, set in Renaissance Italy.

Ritual of Fire is the third Cesare Aldo mystery, preceded by City of Vengeance and The Darkest Sin.

Critic reviews

It’s hard to think of a better guide than D. V. Bishop to the brutality and glamour of Renaissance Florence. Religion and lust? Money and politics? It’s all here, combined into a murderous brew (Andrew Taylor, bestselling author of Ashes of London)

He is fast becoming a serious rival to C. J. Sansom and S. J. Parris with his page-turning novels. Highly recommended

A deft and engrossing historical thriller set in Renaissance Florence drawing on the fascinating and troubling legacy of Girolamo Savonarola. I thoroughly enjoyed the latest – and I think best – in D. V. Bishop’s brilliant series (Anna Mazzola, author of The Clockwork Girl)

In Ritual of Fire, the third scintillating Cesare Aldo novel, D. V. Bishop once again immerses us in sixteenth-century Florence and the heady intrigues of Renaissance Italy. Aldo is a magnificent creation (Vaseem Khan, author of Midnight at Malabar House)

A blaze of a book, grabs you from the first flicker (S W Perry)

Sweltering tension and an explosive ending. Great stuff (Leonora Nattrass, author of Blue Water)

Place and time are pinned with stiletto-precision while pacing and plot grip all the way to the exciting denouement. Absolutely superb (Douglas Skelton, author of An Honourable Thief)

Aldo is a fascinating and charismatic character (Antonia Hodgson, author of A Devil in the Marshalsea)

D. V. Bishop transports you to an utterly convincing sixteenth-century Florence, where the best and worst of human nature constantly circle each other (S. G. MacLean, prize-winning author of the Seeker series)

A first-class historical thriller . . . Bishop’s spirited and richly detailed story is a tour de force (David Baldacci, internationally bestselling author of the Aloysius Archer series, on City of Vengeance)