Magdalen Nabb: The Monster of Florence (USA 2013)

From the Publisher:
Based on a chilling true crime, The Monster of Florence follows the reopening of a cold case -- a serial killer who targeted unmarried couples and terrorized Florence for two decades.

Marshal Guarnaccia's job with the carabinieri -- the local Florentine police -- usually involves restoring stolen handbags to grateful old ladies and lost cameras to bewildered tourists. So when he is assigned to work with the police in trying to track down a vicious serial killer, he feels out of his league. To make matters worse, the Proc he must report to is Simonetti, the same man he knows drove an innocent man to suicide several years earlier in his blind quest for a conviction. The Marshal can't let the stress of the case get to him if he wants to make sure justice is upheld.

Magdalen Nabb: The Monster of Florence. A Marshal Guarnaccia Investigation. Soho Press, ISBN: 9781616953256 (October, 2013), 345 p., $14.95.

Magdalen Nabb: The Monster of Florence (UK 2005)

From the Publisher:
'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

After all the years that Marshal Guarnaccia has commanded the Carabinieri Station housed in Florence's Pitti Palace, great paintings are as familiar a part of his life as the snarled-up traffic. Still, if he joins battle with a successful forger, it is only as a favour to an old friend - and because the man fascinates him.

Then he is dragged into a last-ditch attempt to nail a serial killer; only to find himself faced with a forgery in his own line of business, where the issues prove distressingly familiar. Nobody wants to know the truth about a fake. And if a false case is made against the wrong man, who is going to admit it?

'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

Magdalen Nabb: The Monster of Florence. A Marshal Guarnaccia Mystery. Arrow, ISBN: 0099489899 (September, 2005), 485 p., £6.99.

Magdalen Nabb: The Monster of Florence (UK 1997)

From the Publisher:
Marshal Guarnaccia of the Florence carabinieri is first puzzled and then irritated when he is dragged into a last-ditch attempt to nail the man known as the Monster, a vicious serial killer who has ritually slaughtered seven courting couples in the most brutal of circumstances. Why him? But he is soon sucked into the horror and squalor of a multi-layered case that has confounded the authorities for over ten years, and nothing but the truth will do. 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? No one but him.

Summoning the courage to speak out, the Marshal rapidly realizes that no one wants to listen. It is more comfortable for everyone, even the wrongly accused man, if the bloodsoaked vineyards keep their secret of what really happened on those Saturday nights of the new moon...

A chilling, gripping and perceptive novel based on the real-life case of a Florentine serial killer that will both fascinate and terrify from the highly acclaimed Magdalen Nabb.

"Magdalen Nabb's books are set in a Florence so vividly brought to life that I long to go back there after reading each one" -- SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

Magdalen Nabb: The Monster of Florence. HarperCollins, ISBN: 0006499511 (April, 1997), 346 p., £5.99.

Magdalen Nabb: The Monster of Florence (UK 1997)

From the Publisher:
After all the years that Marshal Guarnaccia has commanded the Carabinieri Station housed in the Pitti Palace, great paintings are as familiar a part of his life as the snarled-up traffic, the marble facades, drug dealing, high fashion and higher pollution of his adopted city of Florence. Still, he doesn't consciously know anything about art and if he joins battle with a successful forger, it is only as a favour to an old friend and because the man fascinates him.

Then he is dragged into a last-ditch attempt to nail the serial killer who has ritually slaughtered seven courting couples over the last ten years only to find himself faced with a forgery in his own line of business and the problems are distressingly familiar. Nobody wants to know the truth about a fake: not the buyer, not the seller, not the fooled expert or the general public. If a false case is made against the wrong man, who is going to admit it?

The Marshal has the courage to speak out but no one wants to listen. It is more comfortable to everyone, even the wrongly accused man, if the blood-soaked vineyards keep their secret of what really happened on those Saturday nights of the new moon...

Magdalen Nabb: The Monster of Florence. Collins Crime, ISBN: 0002325055 (August, 1996), 346 p., £15.99.