Yikes. What more can you ask for in a book like this.... serial murders in the beautiful Tuscan countryside, conspiracy theories, blood feuds, clan mentality? It's all in here. In The Monster of Florence, Douglas Preston chronicles at first the murders beginning in 1981, later connected to 1968 and 1974 killings, which are investigated and covered by journalist Mario Spezi. Spezi watches as the investigation makes several missteps including the basic fundamentals of crime scene security. Suspects are arrested and then freed after the killings fail to stop. The brutality of the murders create panic in the countryside as young lovers are targeted in flagrante delicto. And the police seem unable to stop the carnage. A Sardinian clan affiliated with the 1968 murder comes under suspicion, but the investigators are unable to make anything stick against the experienced criminals. However, as it's clear the family was involved in the 1968 killing and the same gun is used for all the subsequent murders, the family and the Monster must be connected, but how? Unable to make any of the convictions stick, aside from the 1968 conviction of the victims cuckolded husband, the investigators give up on the "Sardinian Trail" and disband letting a new crop of investigators pick up the pieces. Instead of a thoughtful review of the evidence, the new inspector Guittare, along with a Perugian judge Menini, embarks on a twisting conspiracy theory involving satanic cults and fancifal explanations for simple facts. The ridiculousness of their pursuits is highlighted in insisting a Perugian drowning in 1985 is related - the proof, the fact that the body buried was not that of the drowned man - but when he's exhumed and found to be the same man the investigators claim there was a double body switch. If this seems far fetched and hard to understand then you get the drift of how absurd their investigation became.Eventually even Preston and Spezi come under scrutiny for their vehement disagreements with the investigators theories. Spezi is jailed and Menini insists he was involved in the 1985 Perugian drowning. If Menini's name sounds familiar, it's because he used the same satanic cockamamie theories to arrest and convict Amanda Knox in the killing of her roomate back in 2008. The complete autonomy with which Menini operates leads to many miscarriages of justice and wrecks many lives. The book is fascinating and blessedly well written. A very good read for true crime fans and law nerds alike.
4/5 Stars.
Let's be clear... the real man, Pino Lella gets all the STARS. All of them. He lived an amazing life. Did some amazing things. Struggled with PTSD (undiagnosed) and still managed to create loving children and live a life after WWII.
But the writing? Oh the writing of this book, the awkward dialogue, the hyperbolic metaphors, the repetitive clichés - that gets 2 Stars. The writing was really a mess. The book was about 100 pages too long. I feel like Pino deserved a better, cleaner narrative than the tangled mess that was finally published. The compelling nature of the story alone carries this novel to the end, were it not for Pino's incredible story, this would be a difficult one to finish.
So for the good stuff - Pino Lella was a young man living in Milan during WWII and the German invasion following Mussolini's ouster. Didn't know Mussolini was ousted? Me either. This book did provide a lot of unknown detail for me about the role Italy played in WWII and what happened to the Italians. Anyway, Pino is living in Milan when the city begins to be bombed by the Allies in 1943. Desperate to keep him safe, his mother and father send Pino to Casa Alpina, a mountain monastery/summer camp run by Father Re. Father Re immediately begins training Pino to make the mountain crossing into Switzerland, it turns out so that Pino can ferry Jewish refugees to safety. Over the course of approximately 10 months, Pino leads dozens of such refugees over the mountains through harrowing conditions of snow and avalanche.
Upon returning to Milan from Casa Alpina, a now 17 year old Pino is in danger of being drafted into the Italian army and sent to the front lines, where the German high-command is more than happy to place the Italian boys in the front row. Again in order to keep him safe, Pino's parents convince him to enlist in the Organization Todt, a non-German Nazi organization. After Pino is injured in the bombing of the Milan train station he meets General Leyers, the German in charge of the Nazi occupation of Italy. General Leyers is pretty evil, but also a little weird. Anyway, Pino becomes Leyers driver and in doing so acts as a spy for the Italian resistance. One day, as he is dropping off General Leyers at his girlfriend, Dolly's home, Pino runs into Dolly's maid, Anna, a woman he saw at the beginning of the bombardment and hasn't been able to stop thinking about (seriously she gets mentioned a bunch in the first couple hundred pages of the book and it's not clear why because it happens A LOT).
Anna and Pino fall in love with the backdrop of espionage and war and bombing and the Holocaust. Pino sees some pretty sick stuff - including the execution of his cousin, the enslavement of Jews, and the deportation of children. Finally the war ends and Pino is out partying when he discovers that Dolly and Anna have been arrested as collaborators. And.... well I'll leave the last few bits a surprise.
I was sincerely impressed with all that Pino did and lived, but again just disappointed in the quality of the writing. I'm sure this book has been a big success because of Pino, but it really is a shame that it wasn't given a better "script" as it were.
3/5 Stars.
This book was really charming. A lonely inn-keeper on the rocky side of Italy's famed Cinque Terre schemes ways to make his father's run down pensione into a world-class hotel. A 1960s film actress with a terminal diagnosis seems to be the possible solution to his loneliness and his ambitions.
Fast-forward to the future to an unsatisfied production assistant, a has-been/never-was frontman, and a guy just trying to pitch a movie. Somehow these elements all come together and work. And none of the characters are cartoonish or unbelievable (except maybe the jerk movie producer who has had one too many procedures on his fountain of youth face). But again, it never seems too over the top. All the scenarios his just the right notes.
It would be giving away too much to talk about the plot, so I'll say that the writing was really well done. In the end, the characters work through very real world issues and and are able to figure out some way to live with the lives they have been given and the choices they have made. They recognize their own agency in the outcome of their lives and it's refreshing to not have everything too bottled up, too satisfactory in the end.
4/5 Stars.
