America isn't the only place with serial killers. But for some reason, the story of the Monster of Florence didn't make it over here until a U.S. writer ended up involved. I'd heard about this story a year or two ago when I saw it on Dateline. Honestly, the judicial system there makes ours look stellar.

Couples on what we would consider lovers' lanes are murdered. The men are shot, the women mutilated. This goes on for decades with no clue as to who the culprit is. Journalist Mario Spezi gets the first case to report on by accident and continues to write about the case with every attack. He's considered an expert. Douglas Preston and his family move temporarily to Florence so he can research a novel. When he meets with Spezi in the course of that research, he discovers that the home he's rented is basically on the site of one of the murders. Preston becomes as obsessed with the case as Spezi, the two of them discovering evidence that disputes what the police have. When a new inspector takes over the case, both Spezi and Preston are arrested. (Not a spoiler--you find this out right away.) An excellent book and a scary one as well. ( )

This was totally engrossing, especially since I was bopping around the Italian countryside near Florence when these murders were happening. ( )

The book was kind of a bundle of facts and fiction. These two guys have two very different styles and some how they just did not connect. Lots of interesting information - information as scattered as thoughts in a young teenager's diary. Previous line is an example of how the book is written. As buggy as an infested mattress in a drug den. Ahhhhh

Picking up this book, I was expecting an exciting real life mystery, and while there are certainly elements of that in the still unsolved murders committed by "The Monster of Florence" this is more a story of the utter failure of the Italian justice system in the handling of the case than of the murderer himself. The theories put forth by the investigators and the level of evidence that seems to be acceptable in the Italian court system is the real horror story here, and the authors get caught up in it. Overall, I found the book enjoyable, if slightly unsatisfying. The evidence does seem to point towards the suspect put forward by the authors, but the mishandling of the evidence and investigation makes it impossible to come to a solid conclusion, and I suspect that "The Monster" might simply have gotten away with it.

Overall, I'm not sure I buy Preston's theory about who was responsible for the killings. Because the book wanders back and forth between the police investigations and Preston & Spezi's suspicions, I never got a very clear overview of the case against their suspect. In many ways, their presentation of the investigation was as jumbled as the Italian prosecution's theories themselves. I had trouble keeping characters (both prosecutors and suspects) straight.

As a portrait of the corruption of aspects of the Italian criminal justice system, the book fares much better. Many of the prosecution's theories are essentially ludicrous - satanic cults, conspiracy theories involving switching of corpses, Preston & Spezi planting evidence and obstructing justice decades after the last murder occurred. And the methods of interrogation, intimidation and imprisonment are downright frightening, even reminiscent of Kafka's The Trial - and as can be seen in the recent trial of Amanda Knox, these are hardly concerns of the past.

The entire situation is a sad, jumbled mess. It's terrifying to see the lengths the justice system will go to in order to get a conviction in a high-profile case (for similar observations on the American system, see Grisham's The Innocent Man). But at the same time, I did not find this book particularly captivating. It had interesting things to say, have no doubt about that, but ultimately I was left more confused than convinced of the authors' theory of the crime. And I'm still not sure who was investigating whom and what and when...

More at my blog. ( )