The Monster of Florence

by Douglas J Preston

[empressbrooke]

Despite my criminal justice background, I'm not a huge fan of true crime books. It's not that I dislike them, but unless the author has a personal connection to the case (ie: [b: The Stranger Beside Me|18253189|The Stranger Beside Me|Simone Holloway|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1375097970s/18253189.jpg|25711708], [b: Helter Skelter|3596725|Helter Skelter|Kyōko Okazaki|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327525482s/3596725.jpg|3639408]) they often just end up being a recitation of the facts without much more going for them.

When I first caught wind of [a: Douglas Preston|12577|Douglas Preston|http://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1399043352p2/12577.jpg]'s debacle with an Italian serial killer, The Monster of Florence, I couldn't wait to read the resulting book. How often does one of my favorite bestselling authors end up in the middle of a serial killer investigation, being threatened with arrest on secret charges? His novels about serial killers are outstanding, and I was looking forward to reading his non-fictional account.

While the first half of the book is pretty typical of true crime books as Preston catches the reader up with the history of the killings, the second half is just unbelievable. Above everything else, the logic that the public prosecutor and chief inspector use to put together theories on the case are just so out of this world, it's impossible to believe that they're working in a civilized country in the present era. In what was likely a string of murders perpetrated by a lone psychopath who fit a typical FBI profile, these two men strung together a vast conspiracy involving a satanic cult, body switching, instruments that let people communicate with Hell, and an ever widening circle of suspects. At the forefront of it all is, amazingly, a blogger whose insane conspiracy theorist ramblings are taken as gospel (in the legal pleadings and arguments, the prosecutor quoted her verbatim).

The maxim "truth is stranger than fiction" has never been more accurate than it is here. The fascination for me is not the serial killer himself (as far as serial killers go, he's nothing out of the ordinary - I know this sounds bizarre, but I spent a whole semester studying them), but the Italian criminal justice system. Definitely recommended.