Pistols! Treason! Murder!

A remarkable book, indeed a work of history of quite astonishing originality and brio. It is history that speaks to the tastes of the young of today in a way that few modern or postmodern histories have managed. It is a book that breathes new life, shape, and vigor into a discipline that has become flooded with stock and derivative studies. -- Iain McCalman, University of Sydney Walker handles the telling of this complex tale quite brilliantly through a series of varying narrative, graphic, and typographic techniques. This is an exhilarating and learned book, properly adventurous, pleasurably readable, likely to make its mark (and lift the occasional eyebrow). -- Ian Donaldson, former director of the Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University

Aspiring historians will find the methods Walker used to uncover this fascinating story invaluable in their own historical quests.The year is 1622. Anxiety is high in the city of Venice. Rumors of treason flourish. The noble Antonio Foscarini stands accused and pays the ultimate price. Gerolamo Vano, General of Spies, provides the evidence. But who is really guilty? By the end of the year, Vano is swinging from the gallows in Piazza San Marco, while Foscarini is absolved posthumously. Pistols! Treason! Murder! uncovers the shadowy world of seventeenth-century espionage and the truth behind the most infamous miscarriage of justice in the history of Venice. Including vividly illustrated comic strips, accounts of the author's bar tour around contemporary Venice, and painstaking detective work, Jonathan Walker's story of the rise and fall of a master spy is compelling and highly original. In untangling the career of the master spy Vano, Walker invites the reader into the historian's task of piecing together evidence from incomplete archival sources, making sense of motives, coming to terms with the story, and knowing when the job is done. Aspiring historians will find the methods Walker used to uncover this fascinating story invaluable in their own historical quests.