The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston with Mario Spezi

 

            The novel is a true story about a serial killer in the bucolic region of Italy -Florence.  The author, Douglas Preston, was on assignment for The New Yorker magazine to write an article on the Renaissance artist Masaccio, and while there choose to move his family to Florence to live.  He decided to write a murder mystery set in the beautiful hills of the Tuscan region, and needed to learn about Italian police procedure and murder investigation.  Preston was introduced to Mario Spezi, a famous Tuscan crime reporter to help him navigate through Italian investigations. 

 

            Preston never wrote his fictional tale of murder.  Instead, Spezi introduced him to his obsession, the Monster of Florence.  “I christened him il Mostro di Firenze,” said Spezi. Between the years 1974 and 1985, seven couples were brutally murdered in deserted fields around Tuscany.  A possible link between these killings and the killing of Barbara Locci in 1968 connected the Vinci brothers to the crimes.

 

            The police investigation and subsequent murder trials are the scariest part of the book.   The investigations and trials were used as catapults to further the careers of almost everyone involved, from judges to prosecutors to the police.  Corrupt justice system is great for discussion in book club, and this book provides plenty of examples to talk about.

 

            Fiction writing is often taken from real life, and Thomas Harris used various aspects of the investigation of the Monster of Florence in his book, “Hannibal.”  The author points out various people and situations used by Harris in his book that are directly linked to the Monster case.    The similarities are worth discussing.

 

            The book has been heralded as another “In Cold Blood,” and “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.”  I say no to the first and yes to the second.  I read Truman Capote’s, “In Cold Blood,” a long time ago and it scared the hell out of me.  I remember being in the house with that family.  I didn’t find that here, I wasn’t in the fields with them.  The book is similar to “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” but lacks the outrageous characters, and this is no offense to the writing, just the situation.  The two book analogies make for good discussion also.

 

           

Rating: 7.5