Between 1981 and 1985, a serial killer stalked the countryside around Florence, Italy, murdering young couples who parked in isolated spots to make love or to camp. On moonless nights he snuck up on their cars (or, in one case, a tent) and shot them to death at close range. He then mutilated the women with a distinctly notched blade — perhaps a scuba knife — and took the sexual parts with him. Shell casings from the assailant's .22-caliber Beretta, found at the crime scenes, matched casings fired by the same pistol that were found at the scenes of two similar, previously unlinked crimes, one in 1974 and another in 1968.

A local reporter named Mario Spezi called the killer Il Mostro di Firenze — "the Monster of Florence" — as only a monster could murder young couples and so outrageously desecrate the women's bodies. The crimes made international headlines, as much for their idyllic setting as for their gruesomeness: Florence, the cradle of the Renaissance, had become the locus of unfathomable depravity. The American journalist and mystery writer Douglas Preston pondered this contrast when he moved to Florence in 2000 and learned from Spezi that the olive grove behind his farmhouse had been the scene of one of Il Mostro's crimes. The eeriness of that discovery and the unsolved status of the murders of at least 16 men and women prompted Preston to team up with Spezi for a two-part book titled The Monster of Florence (Grand Central).

Part I is Spezi's gripping account (as told by Preston) of the murders and the investigation. A veteran reporter for the Florentine daily La Nazione, Spezi was always one of the first to arrive at the crime scenes, and he has followed the story ever since. He believes that the Monster is the youngest member of a family of Sardinian shepherds who settled in Tuscany in 1961. Part II, Preston's account of his adventures in Florence on the Mostro trail, will appeal to fans of John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Eventually, Spezi and Preston would both become targets of an intimidation campaign by police and judicial officials displeased by their investigative work. Their encounter with arbitrary power is incredible and harrowing, and their interview with Antonio Vinci, the man they suspect to be the Monster, is fascinating: Cocky, clever, and menacing, Vinci appears to be toying with the journalists. To Spezi's question, "So you're not the Monster of Florence?" he smiles and says, "No, I like my pussy whole."