Donna Leon
“Everything I know about the Mafia, I owe to Petra Reski."
Kirkus Reviews
“Journalist Reski personalizes her longtime coverage of the Italian Mafia in this short recent history of the organization…. [E]ngrossing.”
Irish Times (praise for the UK edition)
“Reski’s book, written in an informal, first-person style rather than in academic mode,… takes readers on a journey through just about all the horror stories that Mafia crime has generated in Italy in the last 30 years.”
Financial Times (praise for the UK edition)
“[A] depressing tale of the mafia grip on society…. Reski’s reportage colourfully brings to life the sights, smells and sounds of Sicily, highlighting the robustly supportive role given to mafia murderers by their womenfolk.... [C]ompelling.”
Publishers Weekly“[I]ntriguing…. Reski continually stresses the Mafia organizations’ insidious nature in Italy and abroad as she visits town after town where the mob controls everything from politics to the church…. [H]er expertise is never in doubt.”
Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia, for Shelf Awareness for Readers“[Reski’s] sketches of these ‘bad guys’ and their adversaries are intimate and contemplative, rooted in years of experience. Even while excoriating the actions and influence of the Mafia, she seems to feel respect, even affection, toward certain individuals, revealing a conflicted relationship much like the one she describes between the Italian public and its famous criminal organization…. [A] quiet poetry lurks in certain turns of phrase and carefully crafted images. The Honored Society is an unusually structured view into the strange and powerful world of the Italian Mafia.”
Philadelphia Inquirer
"As a journalist, Reski knows her topic as well as or better than anyone in the business. As a writer, she brings both insight and a sad poetry to her story."
New York Times
"[Readers] will not soon forget Reski's eerie descriptions of the tattered region of Calabria, in southern Italy, where the 'Ndrangheta' controls every breath anyone takes, every inch of road, every thought."
Library Journal
"This grim social and political history of the wildly successful criminal organizations hiding in plain sight throughout Italy will interest European history buffs, as well as Mafia and true crime fans."
Journalist Reski personalizes her longtime coverage of the Italian Mafia in this short recent history of the organization. The author, who grew up in Germany, prefaces the book with an account of what she calls the "German mafia massacre," which she claims brought the Mafia's presence outside of Italy into the spotlight. The night when six Italian men were murdered in a German town sparked her writing of this book, which was published in Germany in 2008; Reski was immediately sued due to its contents. The trial resulted in some redacted passages, left as such for this American release. The blacked-out paragraphs are frustrating, a visible reminder of missing information that seems more tantalizing for its absence. The subject matter is mostly engrossing, but the treatment leaves something to be desired. The narrative is disjointed throughout, with a structure that leads to confusion for those not already familiar with the events. Reski covers major changes in law enforcement and the Mafia, not chronologically but in a series of insert-memory-here asides. While each memory's story is pertinent to an understanding of the many Mafia branches firmly rooted in Italy, it is easy to lose track of the history, particularly because many of the stories are intertwined. Will appeal to those interested in the Mafia, but casual readers may get caught up looking for the story and have a hard time absorbing the material.
