BLOOD WASHES BLOOD A true story of love, murder and redemption under the Sicilian sun

Hardback. More than a century ago, the author's namesake was murdered at a lonely crossroads in Sicily. He had been a revolutionary and a thief, a Robin-Hood bandit who travelled by night in the robes of a friar. Sicilians called him 'the Monk'. Shortly before his death in 1993, the author's grandfather whispered the name of the murderer - and nothing more. The whisper sent him to the fishing village of Terrasini west of Palermo in search of the Monk and his killer; in pursuit of a mystery that left his namesake dead on a country lane, drove his family to America and set in motion an 80yr conspiracy of silence. From his first day in Sicily, the author was confronted by ever more baffling clues and coincidences, an impenetrable code of discretion and a maze of bureaucratic dead-ends, all linked with the island's tortured history and the continuing blood feuds of organised crime. Somewhere in the parallel Sicily that no stranger will ever know was locked the answer to the riddle of his namesake's killing. The revelation, when it came, was to change the author's entire understanding of his family's past and the violent contradictions of his own life. Illus. in colour and b/w + epilogue. 274pp. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. V. lightly browned pp. o/w Nr. F. in F. dw.