On August 1, 2000, Preston arrived in Florence, Italy, family in tow, to research his new murder mystery set in the city which was the birthplace of the Renaissance.  But fate had other plans for him. A chance meeting with Spezi sent him on a different track. Abandoning his original story, Preston decided to collaborate with Spezi and write a book about a serial killer who terrorized Florence for a decade, from 1974 to 1985. The name that Spezi chose to give the killer was the ‘Monster of Florence’.
 
On a balmy summer day in June 1981, Spezi is called to the scene of a horrific crime in a lovely sylvan setting. Two lovers had been shot dead in their car. The girl’s body is horribly mutilated, leaving no doubt that crime was sexually motivated. As the investigation unfolds, it transpires that the roots of the crime go back to 1968, when a similar murder had taken place. A second crime had been committed in 1974. Though the 1968 crime had been ostensibly solved, it turns out that the same gun used in this and the 1974 crimes had been used in the 1981 double murders. So is the 1981 crime a copycat murder or is there more to it than meets the eye? The body count only rises as six more double murders—all young couples making out in their car on deserted country roads—are committed. The 1985 murder of two French tourists was the last known crime committed by the Monster.

 
The case would become the longest and the most expensive criminal investigation in Italian history. Florentines who came of age during this time, say Preston, claimed that it changed their lives and city forever. Many people were investigated and some arrests were made. But nothing conclusive was proved. As time passed, writes Preston, the investigation itself became a monster, consuming all in its path and destroying many innocent lives. At one point there were even two parallel investigations going on.
 
 In the spring 2001, Preston and Spezi embarked on their search to find the truth and track down the real killer. But, in a bizarre turn of events, they are sucked into the treacherous undercurrents generated by their private investigations. Soon, they themselves had become the hunted and by no less an adversary than the state of Florence. While Preston found himself charged with being an accessory to murder, Spezi was accused of being the Monster of Florence! It is a shocking and incredible story which exposes the corruption and ineptitude of the Italian police, the abject failure of the Italian media to stand up for press freedom, and above all, the peculiar culture of a city, where ‘saving face’ is seen as more important than seeking truth. It poses damaging questions about the nature of the democracy that prevails in modern day Italy.
 
Justice denied, justice subverted, and justice made a mockery of. These are the crimes that are committed as the investigation blunders on from one absurd theory to another, and, compared to these crimes, the crimes of the Monster of Florence seem very mild indeed. Ignoring clues and evidence that stare them in the face, men like Giuliano Mignini, the public prosecutor, and Chief Inspector Michele Giuttari, pursue a hare-brained theory proffered by a crazy woman, Gabriella Carlizzi, who runs a conspiracy website. The theory is that the murders were committed by a satanic sect comprising eminent Florentines! If this had been pure fiction, it would have been funny.
 
Preston is a consummate writer. With deft strokes he brings to life the sublime beauty of the Tuscan countryside, a beauty shadowed by the terrible evil it nurses within its bosom. There is a poignant moment during which Spezi talks about his attempt to cope with the horrors of the case. Quoting his psychoanalyst, Brother Galileo, a Franciscan monk, who helped him understand “what was beyond understanding”, he says that madness of the kind that marked the Monster of Florence and his depraved acts is “one unending scream of pain and need into the absolute silence and indifference of society” and it is the “last refuge of a desperate soul who has finally realized that no one is listening.” This is the kind of insight that makes the book different from a run-of-the-mill crime story.
 
Preston also reveals interesting facets about Italian culture. For instance, a Florentine aristocrat explains to him that the Italian word ‘dietrologia’ is the key to understanding the nature of the botched investigation. It simply means, ‘what is obvious cannot be true.’ The idea is connected to the notion of power in Italy where it is essential that one appear to be in the know of all things.
 
The Monster of Florence makes compelling reading for it holds a mirror to the evil which lurks in all of us. Those who were responsible for finding the truth used the case as a stepping stone to personal glory. More than the Monster, it is the evil generated by the lies, arrogance, vanity, ambition, corruption and fecklessness of those in positions of authority that shocks us more. It was left to Preston to mobilize the opinion of the civilized world in order to free Spezi from prison where he had been incarcerated for the crime of going after the truth.    
 
The Monster of Florence was never caught. But the book leaves us in no doubt as to who the authors think he may be. Perhaps, justice may still prevail. But one disturbing question simply refuses to go away, long after the book has been put aside. Who is more evil—is it the Monster of Florence or the Migninis and Giuttaris of this world?