JUL - The Monster of Florence

July review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2014: The Monster of Florence: A True Story by Douglas Preston with Mario Spezi, 2008. [True Crime category]

I chose this book for the True Crime category, obviously, and it made me think about a lot more than a historical string of murders taking place in Italy. It gave me questions about the nature of crime and crime stories, the human mind's cry for a resolution or an ending, the nature of storyteller and story. The Monster of Florence is a book about the killings in Italy perpetrated by an as-yet undiscovered Monster, attacking young couples in the Italian countryside while they were having sex in cars and campsites. The story is split into two parts: first is Mario Spezi's story, the journalist who had been there from the very beginning, the one who told Preston the early tales and introduced him to the story; second is Douglas Preston's story, beginning when he picked up his whole life and transplanted it across the water to a quaint little Italian villa with the ostensible goal of writing another of his heavily-researched crime books. What he got was much, much more than he bargained for.

The dual structure of this book allowed for a segmented interpretation of the section of history it covers, as well as the perspective. With Spezi's story, we are focused on the murders, the impending doom of another to be had, the helplessness and misinformation that ran rampant through the Italian police system at this time. With Preston's, however, we get that history layered with the new events being colored with that history, with those layers. I do not know how to fully discuss this book as a good portion of the plot points represent turning points in then-current case strategy or understanding, so I believe with this review I will suffice it to continue on a more theoretical and philosophical point.

There is an interesting idea in terms of the crime genre that there is a crime that takes place, either before the open of the novel or during the first few pages, that will be solved by the end of the book. This is an idea that is decidedly unequipped to fit a true crime novel, but one which I nonetheless found myself pining for as the book wore on. This is not to say that I have regretted at all my choice in reading The Monster of Florence, only that I noticed a trend in my thought processes as the text drew to a close. I noticed that I kept waiting for a conclusion: I kept waiting for a solution to the mystery, a name to put in front of the title, "The Monster of Florence." But it did not happen. The book was written up until the present-day (as of the time of publishing, 2008), and it closed without any idea as to who the real killer is. It outlines the way the larger-than-life character of The Monster has been infecting Italian criminal discourse, being applied to the trial of Amanda Knox with little to no evidence and resulting in one of the greatest miscarriages of foreign justice for an American citizen in recent history. The idea that the crime is solved at the end of the crime novel, the idea that it is planned out and wrapped up in a perfect little fictional package, was a constant reminder to me that this was not an ordinary crime novel. It was true crime, and for reasons that I will get into in a moment, this brought up a whole host of questions for my literarily-inclined mind.

The idea that there isn't an "end," there isn't a solution to the problem, that it just keeps going right up until the last page, reiterates the fact that this is true crime. This book readily acknowledges the lack of answers that it puts forth, and in this way gives no illusions about what it is trying to be, in the end. Because this is a true story, questions arise concerning the nature of storyteller and story, as well as the conflation of the two: at one point late in the book, Douglas Preston actually enters the story, not as a narrator and observer, but as someone accosted by the Italian police as suspect and mastermind, erasing his journalistic integrity and privilege as an American journalist in the face of a single-minded vendetta for apprehending The Monster. The conflation of storyteller and story again highlights the fact that these are actual events that happened to actual people--facts further underscored by the mid-text insertion of photographs and evidences from the case--which is a sobering one, at best. This line is blurred because of the nature of this book, and it made me think about the nature of these two normally distinct entities in crime novels. I'm not sure that I have any sage words to offer as to the necessity of any or either of these in crime novels, but I felt acutely aware of them as I read Monster of Florence, and to me that is as good a start as any.

Another aspect of the "true" or "non-fiction" part of this book that I have noticed with other such books that I have read recently is the presence of a "Reading Group Guide" at the end, a collection of questions for discussion and perusal. My only concern is that while this sort of "guide" can be informative and helpful to readers who do not usually read deeply for pleasure, I wonder whether it would affect the way someone reads? Does it quash personal opinion in favor of established questions? Or am I just being a superdouche here (this is entirely possible...). Misgivings aside, I did appreciate the interview with both authors included here, and there was a certain question that stirred more of the same questions I had earlier: this question had to do with the word "satisfying," and led me to question what is the point of a story without an ending? Can a story sans ending be satisfying? Is there a sort of elegance, a sort of beauty in an open, quasi-resolution? And moreover, are the questions raised throughout the examinations in this book worth the "dissatisfaction" of there not being a face at the end to pin all the hatred and malice onto? Again, I have few answers because I am a lowly college graduate with a proclivity for close reading and cheap cabernet, but again it is my firm belief that the elicited questions are worth all.