David Bishop
| Website | https://dvbishop.com/ |
| https://twitter.com/davidbishop |
The second Aldo mystery, The Darkest Sin, won the 2023 Crime Writers' Association Historical Dagger - the first time a writer from Aotearoa has won a CWA Dagger Award. The third Aldo novel, Ritual of Fire, won the 2024 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel, while the fourth - A Divine Fury - was a finalist for the 2024 McIlvanney Prize in Scotland. Pan Macmillan will published the fifth Aldo novel Carnival of Lies in 2025.
Bishop is programme leader for a suite of creative writing programmes at Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland. He is also an award-winning screenwriter, has written TV dramas and radio plays for the BBC, and has written fifty issues of The Phantom comic, published in Sweden and Australia. Bishop is represented by British literary agent Jenny Brown.
Genre:
- Crime
- Comic / Graphic Novels
- History
- Non-Fiction
- Scriptwriter
- Thriller
Skills:
- Freelance Writing
- Journalism
- Long-Term Placement (schools, universities)
- Mentoring
- Novelist
- Public Speaking
- Screenwriting
- Workshops (adults)
Branch:
Overseas
Location:
UK
Publications:
City of Vengeance
Winner of the 2022 NZ Booklovers Award for Best Adult Novel
Shortlisted for the 2021 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize
Longlisted for the 2022 Ngaio Marsh Award, the 2022 CWA Gold Dagger Award and the 2022 CWA Historical Dagger Award Prize
'An impressive and immersive debut set in a beautifully realized sixteenth-century Florence' Antonia Hodgson
'A first-class historical thriller . . . Bishop’s spirited and richly detailed story is a tour-de-force' David Baldacci
City of Vengeance is an explosive debut novel in an historical thriller series by D. V. Bishop, set in Renaissance Florence, which continues with The Darkest Sin.
Florence. Winter, 1536. A prominent Jewish moneylender is murdered in his home, a death with wide implications in a city powered by immense wealth.
Cesare Aldo, a former soldier and now an officer of the Renaissance city’s most feared criminal court, is given four days to solve the murder: catch the killer before the feast of Epiphany – or suffer the consequences.
During his investigations Aldo uncovers a plot to overthrow the volatile ruler of Florence, Alessandro de’ Medici. If the Duke falls, it will endanger the whole city. But a rival officer of the court is determined to expose details about Aldo’s private life that could lead to his ruin. Can Aldo stop the conspiracy before anyone else dies, or will his own secrets destroy him first?
Published February 2021 by Pan Macmillan, ISBN: 9781529038774
The Darkest Sin
Winner of the 2023 Crime Writers' Association Historical Dagger
Shortlisted for the 2023 NZ Booklovers Award for Best Adult Novel
Longlisted for the 2023 Ngaio Marsh Award
'Pretty much everything I want in an historical thriller - an absolutely terrific read' Philip Gwynne Jones
'A great insight into Renaissance Florence. What I love about these books is the seamless weaving of factual history with a great story' Abir Mukherjee
Florence. Spring, 1537.
When Cesare Aldo investigates a report of intruders at a convent in the Renaissance city’s northern quarter, he enters a community divided by bitter rivalries and harbouring dark secrets. His case becomes far more complicated when a man’s body is found deep inside the convent, stabbed more than two dozen times. Unthinkable as it seems, all the evidence suggests one of the nuns must be the killer.
Meanwhile, Constable Carlo Strocchi finds human remains pulled from the Arno that belong to an officer of the law missing since winter. The dead man had many enemies, but who would dare kill an official of the city’s most feared criminal court? As Aldo and Strocchi close in on the truth, identifying the killers will prove more treacherous than either of them could ever have imagined . . .
Published March 2022 by Pan Macmillan, ISBN: 9781529038828