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Best of the Month, June 2008: When author Douglas Preston moved his family to Florence he never expected he would soon become obsessed and entwined in a horrific crime story whose true-life details rivaled the plots of his own bestselling thrillers. While researching his next book, Preston met Mario Spezi, an Italian journalist who told him about the Monster of Florence, Italy's answer to Jack the Ripper, a terror who stalked lovers' lanes in the Italian countryside. The killer would strike at the most intimate time, leaving mutilated corpses in his bloody wake over a period from 1968 to 1985. One of these crimes had taken place in an olive grove on the property of Preston's new home. That was enough for him to join "Monsterologist" Spezi on a quest to name the killer, or killers, and bring closure to these unsolved crimes. Local theories and accusations flourished: the killer was a cuckolded husband; a local aristocrat; a physician or butcher, someone well-versed with knives; a satanic cult. Thomas Harris even dipped into "Monster" lore for some of Hannibal Lecter's more Grand Guignol moments in
Hannibal. Add to this a paranoid police force more concerned with saving face and naming a suspect (any suspect) than with assessing the often conflicting evidence on hand, and an unbelievable twist that finds both authors charged with obstructing justice, with Spezi jailed on suspicion of being the Monster himself.
The Monster of Florence is split into two sections: the first half is Spezi's story, with the latter bringing in Preston's updated involvement on the case. Together these two parts create a dark and fascinating descent into a landscape of horror that deserves to be shelved between
In Cold Blood and
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
--Brad Thomas Parsons
In the nonfiction tradition of John Berendt ("Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil") and Erik Larson ("The Devil in the White City"),
New York Times bestselling author Douglas Preston presents a gripping account of crime and punishment in the lush hills surrounding
Florence, Italy.
In 2000, Douglas Preston fulfilled a dream to move his family to Italy. Then he discovered that the olive grove in front of their 14
th century farmhouse had been the scene of the most infamous double-murders in Italian history, committed by a serial killer known as the Monster of Florence.
Preston, intrigued, meets Italian investigative journalist Mario Spezi to learn more.
This is the true story of their search for--and identification of--the man they believe committed the crimes, and their chilling interview with him. And then, in a strange twist of fate,
Preston and Spezi themselves become targets of the police investigation.
Preston has his phone tapped, is interrogated, and told to leave the country. Spezi fares worse: he is thrown into
Italy's grim Capanne prison, accused of being the Monster of Florence himself. Like one of Preston's thrillers,
The Monster Of Florence, tells a remarkable and harrowing story involving murder, mutilation, and suicide-and at the center of it, Preston and Spezi, caught in a bizarre prosecutorial vendetta.
| Not as entertaining as I had hoped for | 2010-09-02 | 3 / 5 |
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Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi's 'The Monster of Florence' intrigued me with the premise that the case of 'The Monster' of the title was used, in part, as a foundation for Thomas Harris in his 'Hannibal' followup to The Silence of the Lambs.
The initial half of the book does provide for a fast paced and exciting read as the Florentine police scramble to find leads to track down a serial killer targeting young lovers for his or her bloody pursuits.
Sadly, in the second half of the book, the trail of the Monster, and therefore the trail of 'interesting story' fade off into near obscurity. As both Preston and Spezi are called into question for their 'closeness' to this case, and Spezi is, subsequently, targeted as the focus of the investigation, and, himself, accused of being 'The Monster'.
I am not generally an avid reader of 'true crime' or 'non-fiction' novels, but had hoped that this, penned by a writer typically of the fiction genre, might read more like a novel, and therefore hold my attention throughout.
However, that was not the case.
I would, therefore, only recommend this for fans of the true crime genre who want facts and details on this specific case. |
| A sophisticated thriller | 2010-08-30 | 5 / 5 |
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This is a true story, which I generally prefer to fiction (especially when it comes to books about crime and the criminal justice system).
The setting in Tuscany is placed in a cultural and historical context, including local personalities, words with no exact parallel in English, and Etruscan roads & walls that predate the Romans.
It is interesting that Douglas Preston, an American writer, would see fit to move to Italy with his family for the purpose of writing a novel. (The kids learned the language faster than he and his wife, as is amusingly related.) Even more satisfying, he stumbles across an Italian journalist with intimate knowledge about another story - a serial killer in the area - and winds up joining forces to write about that case instead.
Some true crime aficionados relish the grisly details of violent crimes, not me, but still the details are an important part of the story and they are graphically conveyed. To keep the sequence of events in mind, I found the timeline extremely useful - without it the story would have been tough to follow.
The Sardinian trail is an intriguing revelation, and I was impressed with the Italian investigators for pursuing it - even though a trial for an old murder in that jurisdiction ends in an acquittal.
But then some of the investigators take this setback as an excuse to pursue another theory, which sounds unlikely to start with and grows increasingly fantastic. Must be the Italian justice system, give me trial by jury any day, but let us not be too smug. There have seen similar perversions in the United States, e.g., in fabricated child abuse prosecutions such as the Amirault case in Massachusetts, and once the authorities go off on a tangent they will deny error to the last breath.
Sepezi has a good idea of who the "monster of Florence" really is, growing out of the Sardinian trail, and he and Preston attempt to push the investigation in that direction. Unsurprisingly, they wind up being accused of obstruction of justice - players in the script rather than simply observers - and are badly treated as a result. Preston's interview, without either an attorney or interpreter, reads like something out of Kafka.
In sum, this is quite a book. I highly recommend it.
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| un-put-downable | 2010-08-23 | 4 / 5 |
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| A thrilling look at the unsolved Monster of Florence case. The book started out like most thrillers-- graphic killings, confused policemen, an unstoppable serial killer. But then the book became so much more when the authors themselves got entangled with the prosecutors. A fine read. |
| True tales of prosecutorial misconduct | 2010-08-14 | 4 / 5 |
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| Serial killers sell more books than prosecutors run amok, but this book's real story concerns Judge Giuliano Mignini's abuse of his office to fabricate fantastical theories of Satanic cults trolling for sacrificial victims and drag innocent bystanders into costly and debilitating murder trials. This should be widely read by students of U.S. criminal procedure to put our country's legal limits on prosecutors into perspective. Preston and Spezi wrote the book well, but some needless repetition and a few typos uncaught by the copy editor cost it a star. |
| The Monster of Florence | 2010-07-26 | 4 / 5 |
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| Very interesting book, shocking as to the crimes committed, and the Italian justice system which is unbelievable. The added chapter about the Amanda Knox is very interesting. |
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