Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston

Amber's Comments: The Monster of Florence (check status at GPL) started out as a slow read. The first half of the book feels like it trudges through events that span forty years. Primarily during the 1980s, a string of murders had every person in Florence on edge. The killer, dubbed The Monster of Florence, would lie in wait in the Florentine country side and kill young lovers who often came to the countryside for some privacy. He would then brutally mutilate the woman.

As the number of deaths increased, questions were raised about similarities to previous murders, dating as far back as 1968. It was difficult to make accurate assumptions about anything, as the police had not properly secured many of the crime scenes and often blatantly ignored key evidence.

What I found really intriguing (and somewhat horrifying), is the second half of the book. This portion refers to the famous thriller novelist Douglas Preston and his Italian journalist friend Mario Spezi. Spezi had covered the Monster case since the beginning. As Spezi told Preston the story of the Monster and the continued ineptness of the Florentine police, Preston became obsessed with the story and the friends began to write a book together. As they went over the evidence, the men were astounded at the illogical leaps the police took in their reasoning. The police systematically ignored concrete evidence and professional profiling to come up with an incredible (and totally false) story involving satanic cults and corruption in the top echelons of society. Most of these theories were based upon unreliable witnesses who were obviously chronic liars and some vivid imagination by those in charge of the investigation. Normally, I am not a true crime reader, but the second half of this book was very interesting.

This book brings to light serious questions regarding the fairness of the Italian justice system. It also highlights the lack of free press in Italy, something I found especially concerning. This book is certainly not for the squeamish; there are some very graphic descriptions.

If you would like to read this book, are in your twenties or thirties, and love to talk about books, please join us for the Coffee Talk Book Club. We meet at the Greenwood Barnes & Noble café at 7:00 on October 16th. We hope to see you there! If you can't make it this time, make sure to join us on Friday, November 20th when we'll be reading Sputnik Sweetheart.

If you can’t make it to book club, please feel free to utilize the Comment field on this blog to share feedback. The link to do so appears at the end of each and every post – just click “Comment”. If you’ve read the same books we have, we’d love to know what you thought of them. Also, let us know if there are any other similar books you enjoyed. Let’s get the dialogue going, book readers!