The Morelli Thing

The unsolved murder of Fred Morelli, in Utica, New York, in 1947, comes to the fore more than 60 years later when 15-year-old Angel, hacker extraordinaire, has his guitar smashed by Victor Bocca, one of the original suspects in the murder. Angel hacks files that may point not only to Bocca’s involvement but also that of the mob. From there, mayhem breaks loose as assassins descend on Utica to silence Angel. In the midst of it is Angel’s adoptive father, Eliot Conte, who, along with his close friend Police Chief Antonio Robinson, must try to unravel the mystery of what is going on before more killings take place, including that of Angel himself.

AUTHOR

Frank Lentricchia

Frank Lentricchia was born to working-class parents in Utica, New York, in 1940. He earned his M.A. from Duke University in 1963, and his Ph.D. in 1966. His first two books were about modern poetry, and he then began to write more about literary theory, publishing his ground-breaking books in the early 1980s. Lentricchia served as the editor of two book series, one for The University of Chicago Press (The Wellek Library Lectures), and one for the University of Wisconsin Press (The Wisconsin Project on American Writing.) During these years, he began to drift from his previous work in theory. Lentricchia’s first non-scholarly book, The Edge of Night, was published in 1994, and he soon followed with his much-noted essay in Lingua Franca, “Last Will and Testament of an Ex-Literary Critic,” his farewell to certain types of academic criticism and theory. Though he did not completely abandon literary comment, Lentricchia from then on devoted himself to fiction. To date, he has published 12 books of fiction.