The Monster of Florence

Marshal Guarnaccia of the Florence carabinieri is first puzzled and then irritated when he is dragged into a last-ditch attempt to nail the Monster, a vicious serial killer who has ritually slaughtered seven courting couples in the most brutal of circumstances. But he is soon sucked into the horror and squalor of a multi-layered case that has confounded the authorities for over ten years. So when a case is made out against the wrong man - a monster in his own right who beats his wife and sexually abuses his daughter - who is going to admit it? Summoning the courage to speak out, the Marshal rapidly realises that no one wants to listen. It is more comfortable for everyone, even the wrongly accused man, if the blood-soaked vineyards keep their secret of what really happened on the Saturday nights of the new moon - Nabb’s account of the details is freshly horrifying, as are many of the characters who people the book.
The vicious, incestuous suspect is - so vivid on the page that the reader feels the need of a shower after each of his many appearances - one of the many wonderful things about this book is the impossibility of distinguishing between fact and fiction, but that is, after all, the nature of justice in Italy. - Donna Leon in the Sunday Times . A haunting thriller where past and present collide, where ambition brutalises those who have most need of compassion and where lies are often more credible that truth - Val McDermid in the Manchester Evening News . A brilliant detective story - T J Binyon in the Evening Standard .