Nothing ever happens on a Sunday
1. The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston with Mario Spezi
Nothing ever happens on a Sunday. These fateful words, spoken by a crime desk reporter at an Italian newspaper when he asks a fellow journalist to cover for him, begin a three decades-long search for a murderer that remains unsolved to this day. This book is a first-person account of what is easily the most botched investigation I have ever heard of. I saw this book on the bargain book shelf at the local Borders (unfortunately, independent booksellers without a religious agenda are non-existent here where I'm recovering), and I thought it would be an interesting story of serial murder in Tuscany. What it became, though, was a tragic discourse in political gain at the cost of truth, leaving innocent suspects ruined and victims' families without answers or even the hope of them.
Douglas Preston, famed American mystery novelist, becomes embroiled in the the story of Il Mostro di Firenze when he moves his family to Florence, Italy, to work on a new novel. The villa they occupy is adjacent to an olive grove in which the Monster killed two of his victims. He befriends Mario Spezi, the above named "fellow journalist", who spent much of his career writing about the Monster's murders. The two begin going through all of Spezi's old files with the intent of writing an article for The New Yorker, but instead they wind up being investigated themselves.
The investigation is a three-act tragedy, each act led by a different chief investigator with his own theory of who committed the murders and for what reason. The tragedy is that each investigator pursues his suspect with dogged relentless even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Preston remarks on tne evil of the Monster, but also the evil (as it were) of those who investigated the murders:
Some of the top investigators, prosecutors, and judges in the case, charged with the sacred responsibility of finding the truth, appeared to be more interested in using the case to leverage their power to greater personal glory. Having committed themselves to a defective theory, they refused to reconsider their beliefs when faced with overwhelming contradictory evidence. They cared more about saving face than saving lives, more about pushing their careers than putting the Monster behind bars. Around the Monster's incomprehensible evil had accreted layer upon layer of additional falsehood, vanity, ambition, arrogance, incompetence, and fecklessness. The Monster's acts were like a metastasized cancer cell, tumbling through the blood to lodge in some soft, dark corner, dividing, multiplying, building its own network of blood vessels and capillaries to feed itself, swelling, expanding, and finally killing. (p. 202)
The crazy investigation is a commentary on Italian culture, what Preston's friend Count Niccolo Capponi calls dietrologia = the study of behind, i.e., finding what's hidden behind the obvious. "'At all costs, they have to find something behind the apparent reality. There cannot not be something. Why? Because it is not possible that the thing you see is the truth. Nothing is simple, nothing is as it seems'" (p. 222).
Count Niccolo continues by explaining that Italians' inherent distrust of the rich figures into the prominent theory that a satanic cult is behind the murders, and that the investigators must "save face" even in the face of evidence disputing their theories.
"In Italy, the hatred of your enemy is such that he has to be built up, made into the ultimate adversary, responsible for all evil. The investigators in the Monster case know that behind the simple facts hides a satanic cult, its tentacles reaching into the highest levels of society. That is what they will prove, no matter what. Woe to the person . . . who disputes their theory because that makes him an accomplice. The more vehemently he denies being involved, the stronger is the proof." (pp. 222-223)
Preston pays no heed to this veiled warning from his friend and winds up being effectively kicked out of Italy after being intensely interrogated and accused of conspiring to help plant evidence to confuse the investigation. Later, Spezi is jailed.
If a fiction writer were to present a story of this nature to a publisher, it would probably be rejected as "unbelievable." This book certainly proves that truth is stranger than fiction.
Nothing ever happens on a Sunday. These fateful words, spoken by a crime desk reporter at an Italian newspaper when he asks a fellow journalist to cover for him, begin a three decades-long search for a murderer that remains unsolved to this day. This book is a first-person account of what is easily the most botched investigation I have ever heard of. I saw this book on the bargain book shelf at the local Borders (unfortunately, independent booksellers without a religious agenda are non-existent here where I'm recovering), and I thought it would be an interesting story of serial murder in Tuscany. What it became, though, was a tragic discourse in political gain at the cost of truth, leaving innocent suspects ruined and victims' families without answers or even the hope of them.
Douglas Preston, famed American mystery novelist, becomes embroiled in the the story of Il Mostro di Firenze when he moves his family to Florence, Italy, to work on a new novel. The villa they occupy is adjacent to an olive grove in which the Monster killed two of his victims. He befriends Mario Spezi, the above named "fellow journalist", who spent much of his career writing about the Monster's murders. The two begin going through all of Spezi's old files with the intent of writing an article for The New Yorker, but instead they wind up being investigated themselves.
The investigation is a three-act tragedy, each act led by a different chief investigator with his own theory of who committed the murders and for what reason. The tragedy is that each investigator pursues his suspect with dogged relentless even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Preston remarks on tne evil of the Monster, but also the evil (as it were) of those who investigated the murders:
Some of the top investigators, prosecutors, and judges in the case, charged with the sacred responsibility of finding the truth, appeared to be more interested in using the case to leverage their power to greater personal glory. Having committed themselves to a defective theory, they refused to reconsider their beliefs when faced with overwhelming contradictory evidence. They cared more about saving face than saving lives, more about pushing their careers than putting the Monster behind bars. Around the Monster's incomprehensible evil had accreted layer upon layer of additional falsehood, vanity, ambition, arrogance, incompetence, and fecklessness. The Monster's acts were like a metastasized cancer cell, tumbling through the blood to lodge in some soft, dark corner, dividing, multiplying, building its own network of blood vessels and capillaries to feed itself, swelling, expanding, and finally killing. (p. 202)
The crazy investigation is a commentary on Italian culture, what Preston's friend Count Niccolo Capponi calls dietrologia = the study of behind, i.e., finding what's hidden behind the obvious. "'At all costs, they have to find something behind the apparent reality. There cannot not be something. Why? Because it is not possible that the thing you see is the truth. Nothing is simple, nothing is as it seems'" (p. 222).
Count Niccolo continues by explaining that Italians' inherent distrust of the rich figures into the prominent theory that a satanic cult is behind the murders, and that the investigators must "save face" even in the face of evidence disputing their theories.
"In Italy, the hatred of your enemy is such that he has to be built up, made into the ultimate adversary, responsible for all evil. The investigators in the Monster case know that behind the simple facts hides a satanic cult, its tentacles reaching into the highest levels of society. That is what they will prove, no matter what. Woe to the person . . . who disputes their theory because that makes him an accomplice. The more vehemently he denies being involved, the stronger is the proof." (pp. 222-223)
Preston pays no heed to this veiled warning from his friend and winds up being effectively kicked out of Italy after being intensely interrogated and accused of conspiring to help plant evidence to confuse the investigation. Later, Spezi is jailed.
If a fiction writer were to present a story of this nature to a publisher, it would probably be rejected as "unbelievable." This book certainly proves that truth is stranger than fiction.