by SE Mathews

Created on: February 19, 2009   Last Updated: February 23, 2009

Douglas Preston's The Monster of Florence is not so much a murder mystery but a chronicle of the author's discovery of a murder mystery where fiction could never be stranger than the truth because the truth is so difficult to find.

The novel begins with a brief introduction by Preston on how he became entranced by Italy when he was a child and how in 2000, he and his family get the opportunity to move to Italy on an assignment. It is there that he nurtures his dream of writing a murder mystery novel.

In researching the intricacies of the Italian police procedural system, he meets a journalist named Mario Spezi who then relates to him the grisly, unsolved murders of lovers killed in their cars or in act of making love. The first known murder took place in 1968 and the fear still hung over the city. Spezi had dubbed the killer 'il Mostro di Firenze' or The Monster of Florence and as Preston writes, the murder spree would change and shadow the citizens of Florence up to the present day.

Preston keeps the prose simple and since this is a true story account, the simplicity works especially with the scope of the story and the reader should make no mistake that the scope of the murders is huge.

As Preston relates the story, the case seeps into Florentine life as if all the sewer pipes backed up and the resulting stench cannot be wiped away. Even Spezi and Preston are unable to keep themselves out of the fray as Spezi is accused of being the Monster of Florence and Preston is accused of being an accessory to the murders.

So what begins as a hopeful quest to solve the case tumbles into a labyrinthine mess of medieval proportions.

In that sense, the book is fascinating. Everything one might want in a murder mystery is there. Sex, murder, inept police, crazy journalists, frightened city folk, innocent victims, and a mix of dread and melancholy that no one can get escape from.

At the same time, there is an uncomfortable feeling that those involved, including Spezi and Preston, are enjoying the strangeness that is a consequence of the case perhaps a little too much. It is a strange detachment in that the reality is fiction and fiction is reality. It is not until the mother of victim from 1974 speaks of her life and how she is surrounded by death that an honest reality intrudes and the reader is bluntly reminded that the people who died were real, not characters in a HBO-television series.

As I neared the end of the novel, I found myself wishing that I had not picked up the book because the end isn't an end but rather an affirmation that there is no end to a horror like this one. Yet, this strange chronicle was also a reminder that victims of these horrific crimes are people, not merely evidence at a crime scene, and those who are involved in these crimes by circumstance such as being an investigating officer, a journalist, a grieving family member or a fearful city, are never quite the same.

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