The Lost City of the Monkey God is a 2017 non-fiction book by Douglas Preston (who also wrote The Monster of Florence, which I didn’t realize until recently) about the efforts to discover La Ciudad Blanca in Honduras.
Legends of La Ciudad Blanca go back centuries, with stories circulating as far back as the era of the conquistadors of Spain. Naturally, La Ciudad Blanca is supposedly a civilization of legendary wealth, and people have been exploring the Honduras and Nicaragua jungles for decades, looking for the ancient ruins of the city (and probably hoping to find lots of gold). Archeologists, anthropologists and the other ‘ists’ who study these things now believe that while it’s likely such a settlement did exist, it was probably a larger civilization over a larger area that just one specific city.
Preston’s book takes on one such effort to locate what’s left of the civilization. The book debunks claims to have found such a city in the 1930s (when these exploration expeditions were quite common). Those 1930s expeditions are where the book gets its name from, though.
Preston ends up joining a joint Honduran & American expedition to a previously unsearched area, where lidar technology indicates extensive archaeological sites hidden by the rainforest. The site ends up being a large pre-Hispanic settlement – with plazas, terracing, canals, roads, etc… The site indicated that in this area once was an extensive, fairly advanced civilization. It was also determined to be abandoned approximately 500 years ago. While this city was an invaluable find, the existence of La Ciudad Blanca remains uncertain. The city Preston’s expedition found is modernly called ‘City of the Jaguar.’
Preston’s book was quite interesting and I learned a lot from it (I don’t know that much about South America, so it’s not surprising I learned a lot). In addition to the discovery of the abandoned settlement, Preston recounts the history and geography of the area, mostly remote tropical rainforest, as well as the trials and tribulations of the expedition – dehydration, mud, parasites, poisonous snakes. So, you know, all everyone’s favorite things.
The book was interesting and I learned a lot. Would recommend.
Tag Archives: authors: douglas preston
The Lost City of the Monkey God
The Monster of Florence
I did a few true crime books in 2018.
The Monster of Florence: A True Story is a book by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi about the serial killer given that moniker, who terrorized the Italian province of Florence, Italy from 1968 to 1985. All 16 victims were young amorous couples in the countryside.
This was a fascinating book because it becomes more about how the authors ended up the prime suspects (Preston was entirely too young to commit the crime and wasn’t even in Italy at the time) and what a failure the Italian justice system is.
Preston and Spezi were outspoken critics of the way the Italian authorities handled the case – in fact, nobody even thought to connect the crimes until 1981.
The history of the victims is documented pretty well, as well as what took place at the crime scenes. Unfortunately, because of the ineptness of the Italian “justice system,” the killer was never caught. In fact, the courts decided it was a group of people who committed the crimes, even though this seems unlikely based on accounts provided in Preston’s book.
There is no current investigation in the Monster of Florence case. There have been no murders connected to the case since 1985. There’s a theory out there that the Monster of Florence and the Zodiac Killer were one in the same, but it is just a theory, and I haven’t investigated it myself.
The Italian justice system is indicted in The Monster of Florence: A True Story more than any suspect. The police botched the investigations of the murders, destroyed the crime scene, didn’t follow up leads and make arrests. The authors of the book, Preston and Spezi, were arrested and the prosecutors were clearly abusing their office.
It was an interesting story, although in terms of presenting who may have murdered sixteen people, not very satisfying.
words in scarlet ink 