THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE: A True Story
Douglas Preston with Mario Spezi
Grand Central Publishing
True Crime
ISBN: 9780446581196

• Read an Excerpt

Romantic Florence, a place nearly every visitor to Italy is passionate about. Yet a city blessed with such splendor and steeped in so much culture still has a dark side. “Even at the height of the Renaissance, beauty mingled with blood, civilization with savagery, in this city of paradox and contradiction.”

Beginning sometime in 1968 or 1974, depending upon which authority you listen to, a killer --- or killers --- brutally murdered young couples as they made love under the new moon on secluded lovers’ lanes around Florence. The murders went on until 1985, gripping Florentines in an unaccustomed terror. The crimes were so horrific that the press dubbed him Il Mostro di Firenze, or The Monster of Florence.

Hundreds of tips flooded the offices of investigators, keeping them very busy chasing down leads. Wives turned in husbands, shopkeepers pointed at rivals, cousins accused each other, and every new arrest gave residents hope. Dozens of suspects were paraded into the interrogation rooms with an impressive number of them tried and convicted, only to be released when the Monster killed again. Far from being discouraged, the police headed off in another direction, as sure of the accuracy of their newest theory as they had been of the previous one.

Over a decade after the last victims were found slaughtered in the hills, American thriller novelist Douglas Preston moved his family to Florence with plans to write a great mystery there. By happenstance --- or maybe divine intervention --- Preston rented a house with a view of one of the scenes of the Monster’s double homicides. For a mystery writer, the possibilities this discovery opened up proved simply irresistible, and Preston was soon embroiled in his own investigation of Il Mostro di Firenze.

Italian journalist Mario Spezi had spent years following the cases and had written many articles about them. He hooked up with Preston and led him to the murder sites, opened up his own files to him, and introduced him to people with information. Spezi was elated at finding a new ear and eagerly embarked on a campaign to engender in Preston an enthusiasm equal to his own. It didn’t take long for Preston to become irredeemably intoxicated with the story.

What the pair found in their digging pushed them deeper and deeper into the city’s most puzzling mystery. They were baffled at how the carabinieri and polizia had conducted the investigation. They were further baffled at how the prosecutor was lured into filing charges against several men despite good alibis. And then still further baffled at the rulings of the magistrates, which seemingly ignored inconvenient evidence.

Finally, Spezi convinced Preston that he had figured out who Il Mostro was. All the evidence he had read and gathered pointed indisputably to one man. That individual was not one of the men who Italian law enforcement had in their sights, and Spezi’s journalistic exposition on that point did not make the authorities happy. In fact, it made them unhappy to the point of arresting Spezi for several crimes, even hinting at his involvement in the actual murders. And then their attention turned to Preston. When authorities of a foreign government start to look too closely at your activities, it may be time to reconsider the path you’ve taken. Preston had to weigh his desire to follow the story with his desire to remain out of prison.

THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE evokes a harsh contrast of gruesome crime scenes with the stunning background of Tuscany. It seems impossible that the bucolic hills could hold sinister secrets of such horrors. Preston and Spezi reveal the reality of living in Italy, with all of its quaint charm and its imperfect legal system. It’s not all capos and Mafia that make the headlines there. It’s at least one impotent psychopath with a sick desire to prove his power over other human beings. Not only will the Monster’s bloody path horrify you, the treatment of these two authors will, too.

    --- Reviewed by Kate Ayers

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