'The Monster of Florence' by Douglas Preston & Mario Spezi

The Monster of Florence, Douglas Preston & Mario Spezi (3.5)

During 11 years (1974-1985), in the beautiful tourist city of Florence, Italy, someone murdered 7 sets of lovers. This book follows the crimes and the cases against several men accused of being the Monster of Florence. The unique element of this true-crime non-fiction tale is the personal involvement of both writers. Preston is known for his best-selling fiction novels and Spezi is a journalist in Florence who followed this case for many years. Eventually they both get accused of being involved in the murders! While there are quite a few gory details of the murders, one leaves most distressed about the past and current ineptitude and outright disdain of the facts and truth by the myriad of police and judges surrounding this case. I had naively assumed that Florence would be more modern and fair. But given the amount of people arrested as the Monster of Florence with absolutely no evidence against them, the system looked more like something from a early century mob-based Italy. The book was interesting, though sometimes difficult to follow the Italian names of all the various participants. The scenes when Preston and Spezi meet their best candidate for the MOF were particularly chilling – worth reading the book just for that experience.

'Carousel' by J. Robert James

Carousel, J. Robert James (2.5)

The premise of this book drew me in, but the execution was not as good as I had hoped. The book is a mystery set in occupied Paris during WWII. It is one, though not the first, of a series featuring an unusual pairing of a Gestapo agent and a French detective. The complications of this pairing and the time period portended a deep, interesting setting. The story starts with three seemingly separate deaths: a strangled young girl, a carousel operator and a German corporal. The crime fighting pair seem to be set-up for failure with all three deaths by various complicated parties (French underworld, multiple German overlords, etc.). Linking all the deaths seems to be a possible bevy of gold coins. Part of my problem with the book is coming into the set-up with no knowledge of the preceding books (my own fault). There were many confusing references that seemingly would have been clear with earlier books. But the main oddity was in the writing that continued to cause stumbles, specifically the practice of writing from each characters point of view, without clarifying who was ‘thinking’. By content, one could usually figure it out, but the flow was slow and cumbersome. I feel that I missed a lot of the depth of the story, as the reading experience was painful and I hurried to finish. This book was recommended by a mystery buff friend, who apparently has a lot more patience than I do!