The darkest sin by D.V. Bishop

Otto officer Cesare Aldo is summoned to a women’s convent at the behest of a wealthy merchant because there are rumours of men intruding at night. Once he gets in, a bloodied corpse of a naked man is found – stabbed more than a dozen times. One of the nuns is a killer, or so it seems. Aldo must work together with the church to find the culprit. But who is this man? How did he enter the convent at night? Why was he naked? And who did this? When -on top of this all- Aldo meets his niece Isabella in the cloisters his past catches up with him. Meanwhile, constable Strocchi finds a corpse washed up from the Arno in his native village. It turns out to be his former colleague Cerchi whom Aldo has been searching for in the past few weeks.



In The darkest sin , we pick up a few months after the events of City of Vengeance . There are two murder mysteries but the focus is on the convent murder and you immediately notice that this mystery is much more complex than the one in the first book. I could not guess the killer, and that is something I liked a lot :).



Bishop captivatingly describes a Florentine women’s convent of the time. With different classes in nuns, day students and the male church that didn’t want to give them too much power. Behind the walls, there’s also a battle going on to close the convent so they can devote themselves solely to God, while others feel it’s their job to help the poor in the city.



Strocchi, meanwhile, has built a life with Tomasia and when he introduces her to his mother, he finds the corpse of Inspector Cerchi. Now Strocchi is given the task of finding the culprit. And that’s not easy, because Cerchi was such an unpleasant man that his list of enemies is a long one.



I can say that once again I was completely sucked into beautiful Florence. I love how Bishop can bring the 16th century Florence to life. For all fans of historical mysteries/detectives, this series comes highly recommended. I look forward to reading the next part.















































Rating: 4 out of 5.


This is a book set in a monastery, I’ve added it to the list of books with this same setting.



Have you read this series? Do you recommend anything similar?