PISTOLA, the vendetta

279pp., paperback, Hilary Prendini Toffoli, No Place, 2025

ISBN: 9780903733625

The final novel in the Pistola trilogy, set partly in South Africa during the Rivonia Trial. The first two novels in the series are Love and Miracles of Pistola and Pistola, the homecoming.

Pistola is running a restaurant in the historic Italian villa he inherited when he hears that the friend who saved him from drowning 10 years previously is in danger in South Africa, and feels compelled to go and help him.

"Pistola bewitched us from the start as a teenage steward on 1950s South African trains. In book two he went home to chaos in his inherited Italian villa. Now he comes crashing back into our lives via Soweto and SA skullduggery. Captivating! Mesmerizing, actually." Sue Grant-Marshall, Reading Matters, Radio Today

"Hysterical, historical, delicious! Predini Toffoli has thrown the full weight of her stylish wit at this last book in her Pistola trilogy. The vendetta winds itself like a saucy strand of spaghetti around the gastronomic soul of rural Italy and the apartheid South Africa of the sixties. I laughed, I learned, I salivated." Nancy Richards, founder of Woman Zone Book Club   

Journalist Hilary Prendini Toffoli is co-author with Gus Silber of Who's Really Who in South Africa. Her work has regularly appeared in Style, Noseweek, Insig, Financial Mail, Mail & Guardian, Business Day, City Press, Sawubona and House & Leisure. She lives in Cape Town.