Book

Chicago’s opulent Gold Coast becomes a stage for a crime that unravels a decades-old chain of secrets in The Wooden Alley Murder. When a priest’s mutilated body is discovered in a historic wooden alley, amateur sleuths Ceci and Avery Felcetti—a sharp-witted chef and her introspective husband—find themselves entangled in a labyrinth of lies. Their pursuit of truth collides with Liuni Tassi, a Sicilian businessman whose veneer of elegance masks a lion’s hunger for vengeance. As buried sins surface, from Rome’s cloistered convents to Sicily’s mafia-run streets, loyalties fracture, and even faith becomes a weapon.

Farinelli’s prose pulses with the grit of rain-soaked Chicago alleys and the sunbaked tension of Italian villas. Every sentence slices like a blade, balancing brutal violence with moments of aching humanity—a widow’s whispered confession, a lover’s dangerous kiss, the flicker of hope in a killer’s eyes.

The narrative coils like a serpent, revealing how the past claws its way into the present, demanding payment in blood. Characters breathe with raw authenticity: a nun’s silenced scream, a mobster’s twisted honor, a marriage fraying under the weight of obsession. Through meticulous pacing and richly drawn settings, the story immerses readers in a world where every choice carries weight and moral lines blur in the face of retribution.

Here, corruption wears a priest’s collar, justice walks a knife’s edge, and redemption is a currency only the brave—or desperate—dare to claim. Farinelli crafts a tale where shadows hold secrets, trust is a gamble, and the cost of truth is measured in scars. A haunting exploration of how far one will go for love, revenge, or absolution, this story lingers long after the final page.