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A review by lpm100
The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston, Mario Spezi
adventurous
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
Book Review
Monster of Florence
5/5 stars
"Italians: Great looking people, but EXTREMELY poor at criminal investigations in particular and statecraft in general."
*******
Of the book:
-60 chapters+intro+foreword
-Over 331 pages, 5.33pps/per
-Index, but no bibliography
-Unputdownable
*******
This is a brilliant book.
The events described are so farcical, that they could never have been a fiction book - -too implausible-- but it defies believe that these events really did happen in real life. (The author, Douglas Preston, is a best-selling author of fiction books; if there was a fictional plot this good, he would have been the one to dream it up.)
As I'm reading this book, I'm wondering: "who in Italy was NOT suspected of being 'The Monster' at some point or another?"
I might note that it was published about 15 years ago, and 4 out of 8 of the murders have been "solved."
It seems that there was more than one person who did the killing.
That aside, this is a fascinating slice of History of Italy, which was only unified in 1871-- and they were still in the process of doing this during the events of this book.
The circumstances that led to these murders are unthinkable to Americans or people in the English-speaking world. For the record: Italian people of this era lived at home until they get married, and so the logical place to have intimate encounters is in a car (WTF?)
And if there are so many people "being intimate" in so many cars, then some of them will be the target of opportunistic killers. (And if you wanted to sneak up on somebody, wouldn't that be the most logical time?)
*******
I see at least four separate threads in this story:
1. Probability and statistics (p.96). At the time of these events, Florence had about 780k people (380k in 2024). Murder rate at that time was about 4/100,000 per annum (33/year). These murders took place over 17 years, during which time there would have been a total of about 531 murders. Some of these would have similar characteristics just by coincidence.
2. Copycat killers (who sense an opportunity to mask their own criminality by copying another person and throwing the authorities off.)
3. Questionable quality of Italian police work/governance structures. (The Italians have had a hard time managing a state for a very long time; why should this be any different?) For example (p.119): police find a rag with 38 spots of blood, but don't bother to analyze it because it seemed unlikely. Also, they didn't even bother conserving any blood from the victims to cross check it with.
4. Mass hysteria / panic. And that type of thing happens from time to time, and it is just coincidence that it was happening in Florence, Italy. A lot of this reminds me of the Salem witch trials, where everybody thought that everybody else was a witch.
*******
A lot of the material for Thomas Harris's book "Hannibal was actually drawn from Florence, Italy and certain of the events around this story (man eating pigs, etc, p.57).
*******
Verdict: the Amanda Knox trial is not new. Apparently, inept Italian law enforcement goes back at least several decades--and possibly even further than that. If you should happen to get killed in italy, don't expect anybody to find out who did it. (At least not any sooner than you would in Sudan or Haiti.) And if you want to kill somebody and not get caught, Italy might be your best bet.
*******
Vocabulary:
-Bonfire of the Vanities (Renaissance term)
-carabineri (military grade police responsible to the Italian Ministry of Defense)
-felucca
-scagliola
-Barbagian code
-crostini
*******
Quotes:
(p. 19): "In Italy, most people live at home with their parents until they marry and most merry late. As a result, having sex in parked cars is a national pastime.... The investigators discovered the dozens of warriors proud the countryside spying on these couples. They were known as 'Indiani.'"
(p. 52): " The unified country had been created in 1871.... The inhabitants spoke some 600 languages and dialects. When the new Italian State chose the Florentine dialect to be official Italian, only 2% of the population could actually speak it. Even in 1960, fewer than half of the citizens could speak standard Italian."
(p. 246): "The doctor, under threat, gave Catapano a quick lesson in anatomy. With one enormous swipe of the knife Catapano opened the man up and ripped out the heart and liver, one in each hand, and then took a bite out of each in turn. "
Monster of Florence
5/5 stars
"Italians: Great looking people, but EXTREMELY poor at criminal investigations in particular and statecraft in general."
*******
Of the book:
-60 chapters+intro+foreword
-Over 331 pages, 5.33pps/per
-Index, but no bibliography
-Unputdownable
*******
This is a brilliant book.
The events described are so farcical, that they could never have been a fiction book - -too implausible-- but it defies believe that these events really did happen in real life. (The author, Douglas Preston, is a best-selling author of fiction books; if there was a fictional plot this good, he would have been the one to dream it up.)
As I'm reading this book, I'm wondering: "who in Italy was NOT suspected of being 'The Monster' at some point or another?"
I might note that it was published about 15 years ago, and 4 out of 8 of the murders have been "solved."
It seems that there was more than one person who did the killing.
That aside, this is a fascinating slice of History of Italy, which was only unified in 1871-- and they were still in the process of doing this during the events of this book.
The circumstances that led to these murders are unthinkable to Americans or people in the English-speaking world. For the record: Italian people of this era lived at home until they get married, and so the logical place to have intimate encounters is in a car (WTF?)
And if there are so many people "being intimate" in so many cars, then some of them will be the target of opportunistic killers. (And if you wanted to sneak up on somebody, wouldn't that be the most logical time?)
*******
I see at least four separate threads in this story:
1. Probability and statistics (p.96). At the time of these events, Florence had about 780k people (380k in 2024). Murder rate at that time was about 4/100,000 per annum (33/year). These murders took place over 17 years, during which time there would have been a total of about 531 murders. Some of these would have similar characteristics just by coincidence.
2. Copycat killers (who sense an opportunity to mask their own criminality by copying another person and throwing the authorities off.)
3. Questionable quality of Italian police work/governance structures. (The Italians have had a hard time managing a state for a very long time; why should this be any different?) For example (p.119): police find a rag with 38 spots of blood, but don't bother to analyze it because it seemed unlikely. Also, they didn't even bother conserving any blood from the victims to cross check it with.
4. Mass hysteria / panic. And that type of thing happens from time to time, and it is just coincidence that it was happening in Florence, Italy. A lot of this reminds me of the Salem witch trials, where everybody thought that everybody else was a witch.
*******
A lot of the material for Thomas Harris's book "Hannibal was actually drawn from Florence, Italy and certain of the events around this story (man eating pigs, etc, p.57).
*******
Verdict: the Amanda Knox trial is not new. Apparently, inept Italian law enforcement goes back at least several decades--and possibly even further than that. If you should happen to get killed in italy, don't expect anybody to find out who did it. (At least not any sooner than you would in Sudan or Haiti.) And if you want to kill somebody and not get caught, Italy might be your best bet.
*******
Vocabulary:
-Bonfire of the Vanities (Renaissance term)
-carabineri (military grade police responsible to the Italian Ministry of Defense)
-felucca
-scagliola
-Barbagian code
-crostini
*******
Quotes:
(p. 19): "In Italy, most people live at home with their parents until they marry and most merry late. As a result, having sex in parked cars is a national pastime.... The investigators discovered the dozens of warriors proud the countryside spying on these couples. They were known as 'Indiani.'"
(p. 52): " The unified country had been created in 1871.... The inhabitants spoke some 600 languages and dialects. When the new Italian State chose the Florentine dialect to be official Italian, only 2% of the population could actually speak it. Even in 1960, fewer than half of the citizens could speak standard Italian."
(p. 246): "The doctor, under threat, gave Catapano a quick lesson in anatomy. With one enormous swipe of the knife Catapano opened the man up and ripped out the heart and liver, one in each hand, and then took a bite out of each in turn. "