The Monster of Florence
When author Douglas Preston moved to Florence to work on a new novel he never thought he’d get caught up in a real murder case. Much less that those murders took place from 1968 to 1985.
The first half of this book covers the cases and this serial killer that was never caught. Then we get into the truth is stranger than fiction side of this story that directly relates to Preston. I read this book around the time the Netflix Amanda Knox documentary was getting hype for its release (I still need to watch that) and I can say between the two it didn’t make me want to run off and enjoy Italy anytime soon. I’m sure Italy is wonderful, I had friends stationed there and my husband did some study abroad there but this book made their police seem completely incompetent. This book has two different tones, the first half of the book has a very traditional true crime non-fiction vibe. Then the second half where Preston is talking about his own experiences just didn’t feel quite as solid. Maybe it was the truly weird over the top experience he had but it felt sort of like a ranting blog post at times. The book was interesting even if the execution wasn’t consistent.
