In September 2007, the mafia entered Sanne de Boer's life.
A car caught fire on her street.
It belonged to a young neighbor who processed building applications in the municipal administration.
Someone seemed to disagree with their decisions.
The neighbor had a suspicion who the perpetrators were.
She didn't want to talk about it.
David Klaubert
Editor in the department "Germany and the World".
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Nine months earlier, when de Boer had moved from Amsterdam to Calabria, to a village on a hill overlooking the sea, she had no idea about the 'Ndrangheta, the mafia that has its home here at the toe of the Italian boot.
It was the "scent of self-picked oranges" that inspired the Dutch journalist, the hospitality, the rugged cordiality.
When it came to the mafia, her new neighbors were also silent.
The community worker whose car was set on fire didn't even go to the police.
Instead, she looked for a new job.
De Boer didn't ask any more questions.
And lent the woman her car.
But De Boer's Calabrian idyll was damaged.
She tried to find out more about the 'Ndrangheta, about this criminal organization that apparently ruled unseen and untouchable in the mountain village and at the same time made headlines around the world because its killers had shot six men in front of a pizzeria in Duisburg.
The journalist looked for people who dared to talk to her about the mafia: activists, victims, key witnesses, prosecutors, journalists, researchers.
De Boer read investigation and court files.
She followed in the footsteps of the mafiosi, which led her back to the Netherlands - and to Germany, where the 'Ndrangheta has put down particularly strong roots.
A lethal amount of hydrochloric acid
De Boer takes her readers along on this search for clues.
It shows how tightly the mafia clans hold Calabria in a stranglehold, with what misanthropy and lust for power;
how they twist and abuse the Calabrian culture, traditional values and behaviors for their own ends;
how “criminal-leaning farmers and shepherds” became “secret masters of kidnapping” and eventually “secret masters of hard drug trafficking.”
How the 'Ndrangheta operates on five continents without ever losing touch with home.
How she keeps changing, adapting, leaving the criminal world and seeping into politics and business.
"The mafia proliferates like a cancer within a body and not detached from it, using the healthy cells to grow," says prosecutor Antonio De Bernardo.
"The Mafia grows and thrives precisely because it is part of society."
De Boer listens patiently to the people he is talking to, giving them plenty of space to tell their stories, often spanning entire chapters.
There is the Calabrian building contractor, who year after year is at the mercy of the local bosses' blackmail, always on the verge of being drawn into their machinations himself, and when he finally fights back, he is ruined economically and socially drive the isolation;
the key witness, who grows up in a 'Ndrangheta family as in a "tribe with their own religion and their own lifestyle", already trained as a child for violence;
the investigators who dedicate their lives to fighting the mafia and their freedoms to the constraints of 24/7 police protection;
the victims who can no longer tell their own stories,