In 2000, writer Douglas Preston moved his family to a villa in Tuscany so he could work on a new mystery that would take place in Florence. Soon after, he discovers that a clearing near his new house was the scene of a gruesome double murder. The murder was attributed to the Monster of Florence, a serial killer who targeted young couples and was still at large. Preston abandons his novel and begins working on a nonfiction work about the Monster, teaming up with Mario […]
A trip through Dante’s Inferno
As a true lover of Dante’s Divine Comedy, I must confess that Brown’s choice of inspiration for his fourth Langdon novel hit just the right spot for me. While some readers may be bored by his lengthy descriptions of Dante’s cantos on the odyssey from Inferno and Purgatory to Paradise, I wanted more. Some readers may find his near tour-guide-style descriptions of Florence and Istanbul to be a divergence from the plot, but I was entranced and nearly salivating at the chance to visit […]