A Sunny Place for Shady People

About A Sunny Place for Shady People

In 2017, the car bomb assassination of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia sent shockwaves across the European Union, thrusting the small island nation of Malta into the global spotlight. Yet, for those living there, the murder was less a surprise and more a brutal culmination of deep-seated issues. Author Ryan Murdock, a Shift News columnist, initially moved from Canada to Malta in 2011, envisioning a tranquil Mediterranean life. What he discovered, as chronicled in A Sunny Place for Shady People, was a complex, insular culture.

Murdock delves into Malta's unique geopolitical, cultural, and historical landscape, revealing a society where "amoral familism" dictates a worldview in which personal and familial gain often trumps legality or ethics. This pervasive perspective, as Ryan Murdock meticulously details, fostered a culture of corruption that reached the highest echelons of power. The book exposes how the Prime Minister's office became implicated in Caruana Galizia's murder, uncovering a web of money laundering, human trafficking, fuel smuggling, and the illicit sale of EU passports to international oligarchs. Interspersed with Murdock's personal narrative, this compelling non-fiction work offers a critical look at how a powerful cabal nearly got away with murder in a modern society grappling with its ancient roots.

Key Details

• Author: Ryan Murdock
• Publisher: Trinity University Press
• Format: Hardback, 272 pages
• Language: English
• Published: 2024
• ISBN: 9781595342942

Order from BookClub.com.mt — Malta and Gozo's online bookstore.