Monster of Florence (2008)
By Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi
I wonder if you have heard about Amanda Knox, the American exchange student who, along with her Italian boyfriend of two weeks, is on trial in Italy for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher. She will likely go to jail for life, but there is no real evidence against her, and another man, who is unconnected to Knox, has already been sentenced for Kercher’s murder. I’m not trying to argue her innocence, I’m just responding to the case history as a rational, free-thinking person. At the heart of the case against her is a prosecutor who believes Knox was involved in an unsubstantiated, satanic sex ritual that accidentally killed Kercher; this is a prosecutor who relies heavily on the conspiracy theories of a radical blogger, and takes this blogger’s theories as evidence. This blogger has a reputation for spinning Italian murders into the work of deprived satanic cults. Did I mention that this prosecutor is, himself, charged with abuse of office, and is waiting for an elusive trial date? Yet he has been allowed to prosecute in this case against Ms Knox and, surprisingly, he will probably win his case due to a corrupt legal system and maligned public opinion of Knox.
Why do I bring this up in a book review? The prosecutor in question, a man named Giuliano Mignini, is the same prosecutor who arrested crime-novelist Douglas Preston under suspicion of murder. But how did this hugely successful writer and acclaimed journalist, who fulfilled his life-long dream by moving his family to the Tuscan country-side, become a suspect in his own non-fiction murder mystery? Well, you’ll have to read this book to find out.
What is truly alarming about Amanda’s case is that Magnini is allowed to get away with what he does after the mess he already made during the Monster investigation, which he leads for many years. The entire investigation is chronicled methodically, and entertainingly, in Douglas Preston’s and Mario Spezi’s The Monster of Florence. Spezi is the Italian journalist who has been following the case from the beginning, and Preston is the American crime-novelist who was unable to restrain his professional fascination with the case upon discovering that his Tuscan villa neighbored the scene of one of the most famous and grisly double murders in Italy’s history.
Over the course of three decades, 14 murders were committed in Florence, and no one has ever been convicted. There have been many theories and many suspects. Preston and Spezi argue that some of these theories are more plausible than others. There is even a point in the book when the pair feel fairly certain that they have indentified the killer, but the lesson of the story is that people, given the right circumstances, can convince themselves of anything. By the time Preston shares his final thoughts with us, he is no longer so sure what he believes. In a case this long, this complex, this warped, and this nightmarish, it’s easy to see why an investigator might come out the other end a little scatterbrained.
The Monster of Florence is a non-fiction book, but it reads like a great murder mystery. The first section of the book details the case history, as researched and documented by Mario Spezi. The second section brings us up to date, with Doug Preston’s arrival in the country and a renaissance of the investigation. This is where things really get weird. As the two writers plan their book about Italy’s most infamous serial killer, the investigation suddenly looks into them: Spezi is arrested and jailed for over a month, and Preston is banned from ever returning to the country. Even after reading it, I’m not entirely sure how this happened. I don’t think the writers even know. The book does, however, give us an intimate look into a legal system that, on the outside, looks very much like ours, but is nonetheless permeated by intimidating, culture-specific variances that may make you reconsider that future vacation to Italy.
It’s a phenomenal read. It takes me a very long time to finish most books, as I am a slow reader, but I finished The Monster of Florence in 3 days. It’s a real-life mystery you won’t be able to put down.
For more information about Knox’s case, this report is very complete.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008120524_amandaknox17m0.html
Professor P
No comments:
Post a Comment