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A Death in Malta: An Assassination and a Family’s Quest for Justice
Top of the pile
89
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
91/100Critics
86/100Scholars
Author:
Paul Caruana Galizia
Publisher:
Riverhead Books
Date:
November 7, 2023
A journalist's account of the shocking murder of his muckraking mother and a quest for justice that has reverberated far beyond their tiny homeland.
What The Reviewers Say
This book may be an eye opener for those who know little about the country of Malta. The picture offered in these pages is not pretty, laden as it is with pervasive corruption and lurking menace, all the more startling because it involves a European Union member.
Paul Caruana Galizia is a superb storyteller. His book reads at times like a thriller, at times like a detective story, and at times like the work of an investigative journalist uncovering webs of corruption, with levels of detail that will be most interesting to those who understand Malta, its systems and flaws. His mother emerges as no saint either. She was clearly not the easiest of women to live with. Highly determined people rarely are.
Paul has written a superbly honest and very painful account of all this. Like her, he didn’t start out as a journalist, but, also like her and his brother Matthew, he became a highly effective reporter. His fine, natural, relaxed style shows Daphne as a living woman – delightful, quirky, far from perfect, increasingly affected by the things she wrote about and the danger she faced, and utterly magnificent.
Daphne’s work affected her family. It strained her relationship with her husband and seeped into the daily experiences of her three sons. Despite those struggles, their love for this amazing woman shines through.
