Winner of the Crime Writers’ Association Historical Dagger

Shortlisted for the NZ Booklovers Prize for Best Adult Novel

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

D. V. Bishop transports you to an utterly convincing 16th century Florence, where the best and worst of human nature constantly circle each other in this tense mystery -- S. G. MacLean

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.

When a man's body is found deep inside the convent, stabbed more than two dozen times, the case becomes even more complicated. 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 River 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 . . .