'Jon Walker's Pistols deserves to be called our first true work of 'punk history'. Through the dank Venetian alleyways we pursue the elusive and dangerous spy-master Vano in a story that is as lustily exhilarating as the original Sex Pistols'-Iain McCalman Pistols! Treason! Murder! is a highly original biography of Gerolamo Vano, one of Venice's first spy masters. Through surveillance reports and seventeenth-century archives, historian Jonathan Walker uncovers a coded world of politics and espionage, terror and intense paranoia. For survival and in the perfection of his art, Gerolamo Vano developed superb skills in spinning fictions. His deceits led to the arrest and execution of guilty and innocent men alike, before he himself was put on trial in 1622. Walker brings Vano to life and pieces together the universe through which he moved. Interested in pushing the boundaries of how history is told, the book includes playful comic strips, transcripts of imaginary conversations and a bar-crawl around contemporary Venice. Walker's story of intrigue and betrayal will fascinate and enthrall.

Jonathan Walker was born near Liverpool in England in 1969. He was educated at the universities of Glasgow and Cambridge and has published many articles in academic journals on topics such as gambling and espionage. From 2000 to 2002, he held a prestigious British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at Cambridge. In 2003, he moved to Australia to take up a Sesqui Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Sydney. He is currently Senior International Research Fellow at the same university. Pistols! Treason! Murder! is his first book.