A Sunny Place for Shady People: How Malta Became One of the Most Curious and Corrupt Places in the World

A culture of lawlessness infects the Mediterranean island of Malta from high government offices to the lowliest villages, according to this furious exposé-cum-travelogue. Travel writer Murdock (Vagabond Dreams), who lived in Malta from 2011 to 2017, spotlights the 2017 car bombing there that killed his colleague Daphne Caruana Galizia after her muckraking journalism implicated then–prime minister Joseph Muscat in financial scandals. Murdock backgrounds this absorbing (and pretty gruesome) true-crime story—“The first explosion tore off her leg.... She’d only just begun to scream when... a larger explosion engulfed her car in a ball of fire”—with typical travel-writer exasperation at local quirks, like anarchic traffic and the maddening drumbeat of fireworks, which turn gradually more sinister. Murdock reports that he was the object of covert watchfulness wherever he went, his house was vandalized, and his wife was shot at by poachers. Complaining of a society-wide ethos of “amoral familism,” in which people grab what they can for their families via nepotism, influence-peddling, and theft of public funds, Murdock writes with a biting wit (the island’s nightlife district is a vista of “abandoned Burger King containers and vomit slicks”) that shades into somber lyricism (“Those... village streets felt huddled and forlorn, heavy with... old fears”). It’s a potent portrayal of a society mired in corruption. Photos. (Apr.)