Best selling author Douglas Preston has written and in some ways become a character in his own non-fiction account of a serial killer that stalked the hills of Florence, Italy in the 1970’s and 1980’s.  Preston’s investigation of the murders with co-writer Mario Spezi and the making of the book, “The Monster of Florence”, was profiled on Dateline in 2007.  What makes this so interesting now is that the same judge, Giuliano Mignini, that threatened Preston with jail time and ordered him out of Italy is now the officiating prosecutor in the Amanda Knox case which went to trial last Friday in Perugia, Italy. Preston has previously expressed his views on this case, but unlike his crime fiction, the outcome of this murder is out of his control.