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Shakespeare Was A Crime Writer

Shakespeare Was A Crime Writer

My first trilogy, The Comeback Trail, was based in the music business in America. It was a simple tale of a washed-up singer who accidently kills his girlfriend and discovers that the act of killing enables him to write a hit song. To give this some context, I own a record label in the States called Gulf Coast Records, they say write about what you know. If I could just clarify, I am talking about music not murder, if that were the case this would be a confession not an article. I digress. The...

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Death Of A Princess (Empire of Shadows Book 3)

The incident at Elisavetgrad

Roger Morris

On November 14, 1879, a young man was observed acting suspiciously at Odessa railway station. He was lugging around an obviously heavy suitcase but when a porter offered his services, he refused.

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Russia reimagined. Again.

Russia reimagined. Again.

Roger Morris

Once upon a time I wrote four novels set in 19th-century Russia.

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Porfiry and Me

Roger Morris

Crime and Punishment is one of those books. It has a unique power. The idea of it compels you even before you’ve read it.

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Love and death in Imperial Russia

Love and death in Imperial Russia

Roger Morris

In May 1867, a World Fair was held in Paris. Tsar Alexander II was there to show Russian support for France in the face of rising Prussian militarism.

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v

19th Century Russian War Crimes

Roger Morris

In 1837, the former Decembrist revolutionary, Nikolai Lorer, was serving on the frontline in Russia’s war in the Caucasus.

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When Marie met MacDonald

J Boulter

MI5 files at the National Archives reveal the story of a striking female agent and a sting operation during the First World War.

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newspaper clippings

Dare you dig up the past?

Feature by crime writer James Raven

"...my advice to anyone who decides to delve into their family history is to be prepared to discover something that you might not like. "

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SHADOW OF A QUEEN

Peter Tonkin

The downfall and execution of the Queen of the Scots

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But first, to those who have only ever seen Malta as a sun-drenched, short-haul holiday destination, a brief history of the island. Malta is a small island, approximately 30 kilometres by 15 kilometres. In 1539, the Knights of St. John, a Catholic military and religious order dating back to the time of the Crusades, were granted sovereignty over Malta by the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. They ruled for 250 years, until 1798, when Napoleon Bonaparte's French forces invaded and seized control. Napoleon expelled the Knights, but only held the island for two years until the arrival of the British, who made it a protectorate and eventually a colony. In 1965, Malta gained its independence from the United Kingdom, becoming a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and then transitioned from a monarchy to a republic, with a president as the head of state, ten years later. It joined the European Union, a major step in its integration with Europe, in 2004, adopting the Euro in 2008. Malta lies in the southern Mediterranean, at a point 100 km south of Sicily and 300 km north of the Libyan coast. Since the time of the Knights, it has been a strongly Catholic island with as many churches as there are days in the year. The Knights became famous for repelling the Ottomans in 1565, during the Great Siege of Malta, and were credited with being the frontline of the Christian defence of Sicily and ultimately Rome itself from Suleiman the Great’s Muslim invaders. However, Rome’s gratitude did not stop the Italians from joining with the Germans in bombarding the island during World War II. Malta was a vital strategic location, supplying the Allied forces in North Africa, as well as home to a significant naval base that defended the Suez Canal and the links to the Dominions in the east. It became the most bombed place on earth. It was on the point of surrendering to the Axis forces when the Germans became distracted by the opening of the Eastern Front and turned their attention to Russia. How different the outcome of the war could have been had the Germans not ruined their Russian allies. In recognition of this second Great Siege of Malta, George VI proclaimed: "To honour her brave people, I award the George Cross to the Island Fortress of Malta to bear witness to a heroism and devotion that will long be famous in history." `Despite its strong links to Europe and its admission into the European Union, Malta still retains a North African feel. The same traditional narrow streets with boxed, wooden Arabic balconies and flat-roofed limestone terraced housing can be found in Tripoli or Tunis. Newer, cheaper blocks of low-rise whitewashed housing crowd the so-called "villages" that form an urban sprawl on the east of the island, creating some of the densest population concentrations in Europe. Even the Maltese language reinforces the island's links with Africa and the Middle East. Its rough, guttural Semitic tongue originates from the Phoenician settlers, from what is now Lebanon, who settled the island some 800 years before the Common Age. The official language of the Knights was Italian, but the Maltese dialects survived dialects and, uniquely for an Arabic tongue, were written using the Latin alphabet. In the years following independence, Malta developed a ‘Look Southwards’ policy, centred around forging links with Gaddafi’s Libya. Before its civil war, Libya had a thriving oil industry and used its reserves of currency to expand its influence across Africa and beyond. This shift was largely driven by economic necessity. Malta needed to replace the revenue and jobs lost with the gradual withdrawal of the British military, which culminated in the closure of its naval base in 1979. Malta received millions in aid and loans from Libya, and a strong relationship has existed between the two countries since that time. It is worth noting that there is extensive documentation, including court judgments and investigative journalism, pointing to the fact that significant funds of questionable origin linked to the Gaddafi family were held in Maltese banks and company accounts around the time of his death in 2011. In the Inspector George Zammit books, I explore the darker present-day links between Libya and Malta, including money laundering, oil smuggling, sanction busting, the civil war, and migrant trafficking. As Inspector George Zammit discovers in his adventures, such activities are not confined to Malta and Libya, but are prevalent throughout the Southern Mediterranean basin. Apart from the long-term implications of the ‘Look Southwards’ policy, Malta is also a close neighbour to Sicily and southern Italy. A recent Europol report ranked Malta among the top five countries targeted by organised crime networks. Italian, Russian and various Eastern European crime groups are all involved in extortion, money laundering, fuel smuggling, people trafficking, and drug trafficking operations. (See my later article about the impact on Hurds Bank, the offshore shallows, where illicit ship-to-ship transfers facilitate much of this international crime.) Although Malta already had a dubious reputation as being a shady financial centre, the murder of an investigative journalist profoundly impacted the island (and the rest of Europe), exposing deep-seated issues within the country’s political and business landscape. Along with weak governance, poor policing, and a tardy judiciary, Malta also suffers from what I call small island syndrome. In a population of some 550,000 where the island's size limits individual mobility, everybody knows everybody else. The 100 most popular surnames are shared by roughly 75% of the population. Families are large and interconnected, and politics is a fierce, partisan affair, where both main parties commonly buy influence in their pursuit of power. It is the same in the south of Italy and Sicily, where governance is weak and communities compensate by developing their own loyalties and codes of ethics, even if that includes criminal behaviours. Following independence, there were periods of serious poverty, leading to large-scale migration across the Commonwealth, and a loss of confidence in the state's ability to provide the most basic support. For those that remained, families had to do what they could to survive and this provided the background for the formation of a ‘family first’ mentality, which still exists to this day. There is a culture of self-interest and impunity on the island that stretches from the very top of government down to the community level. The sustained economic growth since joining the EU (average GDP growth of 5.5% per annum) has also led to a 'get-rich-quick' culture, where entrepreneurship often outstrips regulation and good governance and looking after number one is the most objective. An independent inquiry, by three retired Maltese judges in 2021, into the death of the journalist concluded that the Maltese state bore responsibility for creating a "climate of impunity" that enabled the killing of the journalist. This included findings of online harassment campaigns against her by staff serving those in high office. The inquiry also attributed indirect responsibility to high-ranking officials for failing to act against their associates whose secret companies were exposed in public disclosures, namely the Panama Papers. The state's acknowledged contribution to a "climate of impunity" is evidence of the broader systemic failures in governance and accountability I have already mentioned. To give you an idea of the climate at the time of the murder, it is worth understanding the political scene. The Maltese Labour Party won power in 2013, after 15 years in opposition, under the leadership of Joseph Muscat. Muscat was a young, energetic MEP and former journalist who understood the meaning of power and was unafraid to use it. His first few months were spent systematically purging the Maltese civil service, firing every permanent secretary and replacing them with Labour Party apparatchiks – so-called ‘persons of trust’. Every Labour MP, not already in the cabinet, was placed on the state payroll. Politically certain associated members of the armed forces jumped four ranks, and senior policemen were similarly replaced by party loyalists. Malta’s lust for construction and development was further facilitated by the removal of the planning chiefs and the appointment of developer-friendly party members. The heads of regulatory bodies were removed, and inexperienced but loyal ‘yes men’ took their place. The former BBC journalist and co-author of the book Murder on the Malta Express, John Sweeney, describes Muscat’s Labour Party not as a political party, but as a cult, intent on plundering the public purse. Muscat effectively captured the state apparatus and proceeded to bend it to his will. For those who are unfamiliar with the journalist I am referring to, let me explain who she was and why her significance extends far beyond this small island in the southern Mediterranean. She wrote a blog, widely read in Malta and abroad, called Running Commentary, which ruthlessly exposed allegations of corruption among senior Maltese politicians from all parties and those ‘bigwigs’ in the local business community. At the time of her death, she was contesting over forty libel cases, many brought by government officials who had been offended by the spotlight she had shone into the darker corners of their activities. The blizzard of lawsuits was designed to drain her of time, energy and money, blatantly attempting to silence her investigative reporting on corruption and organised crime. They had a pivotal effect, and in 2024, the EU responded to this abuse of process by issuing a directive requiring all EU states to protect those finding themselves defending "manifestly unfounded claims or abusive court proceedings", so-called ‘SLAPP’ actions. To this day, these recommendations to protect journalists and others have still not been fully implemented in Malta. More immediate threats to the journalist in question came in the form of her house being firebombed, the slaughter of a pet dog and messages containing threats to kill. The government’s response was to withdraw the police protection she had previously enjoyed. Unfortunately, these threats were to prove all too real. The massive car bomb that killed her was triggered by a mobile phone call from a small fishing boat cruising in Malta’s Grand Harbour, acting on a prompt from an observation post on a hilltop some distance from her home. Investigators from the Netherlands, Europol and even the FBI, helped the Maltese Pulizija piece together the events leading up to the October 2017 murder, gathering forensic evidence and data from mobile phone calls. In December of that year, three men ‘known to the police’, Vincent Muscat (no relation to the Prime Minister) and two brothers, Alfred and George Degiorgio, were arrested at their premises in the ‘potato sheds’ area of Valletta’s docks. They had been forewarned that the Pulizija were on their way and threw their mobile phones into the Grand Harbour, from which police divers later retrieved them. For the Maltese authorities, there was a feeling of ‘mission accomplished’, as the carefully collected forensic and mobile phone evidence presented a damming case against the three of them. However, it took three years of delays, interim applications and time wasting before Vincent Muscat made a plea deal, spilt the beans and received a 15-year sentence. His two co-defendants, the brothers, who were accused of detonating the bomb, served a further eighteen months on remand before pleading guilty to all charges in 2022 and receiving sentences of 40 years in prison. They had made more than 100 preliminary pleas to the court. These included numerous requests for pardons in exchange for information about the involvement of Maltese politicians in this and other murders, but eventually, when all else failed, they changed their plea to guilty. The main question, though, is why the journalist was murdered and by whom? Unfortunately, despite the evidence produced to date and the many theories in circulation, it is not going to be possible to discuss these questions due to the imposition of controversial ‘blackout orders’, made in the trial of the individual accused of being the mastermind behind the murder of the journalist. The "blackout orders" refer to a series of judicial directives culminating in the most comprehensive decree that prevents me from writing or discussing any information about the case of the murdered journalist or the accused individual. This sweeping prohibition extends to all forms of media coverage, public discussions and debates related to the case. There is an exception for the publication of full, verbatim transcripts of court proceedings, implying that any analysis, commentary, or reporting beyond the direct court proceeding is forbidden. This situation has ignited a fierce debate over press freedom and the public's right to information. I am not a journalist, and certainly not an investigative journalist. In Malta, it takes a particular form of courage to follow that specific occupation. However, in my series of six Inspector George Zammit books, set in Malta, I assume the existence of corruption in high places and consider the inefficiencies within the Maltese judicial system as a given. For more background on the case, in material already published before the ‘blackout’, I recommend Murder on the Malta Express: Who Killed Daphne Caruana Galizia? written by three journalists: John Sweeney, Manuel Delia, and Carlo Bonini and A Sunny Island for Shady People written by Ryan Murdock. Manuel Delia, along with John Sweeney, are the host of the podcast Crooks Everywhere, which further explores the journalist’s assassination and the theme of corruption in Malta. In a small island where speculation and rumour is rife and where leaks from within the justice system are commonplace, it is understandable why the courts have taken steps to prevent prejudice to the accused's right to a fair trial. However, the extent of the orders is disproportionate and undermines the public’s right to know. Their unlimited duration, in a country where it can take many years to bring a case to trial, is also considered excessive and detrimental to public trust. Were the bans limited to information that would be directly prejudicial to the proceedings themselves, they would be more reasonable in scope. But as drawn, they are so wide as to stifle journalistic investigations into the many outstanding questions that still surround the case, which is particularly difficult to justify in a system tarnished by allegations of corruption and political misconduct. The orders give judicial support to an environment of secrecy and lack of transparency that only further erodes the public's trust in the apparatus of the state. I suspect it will be several years before the current proceedings, which led to the bans, reach a trial. In that time, all discussions or publication of materials about the case will remain subject to the court's orders. In a small island of less than half a million people, where everything and everyone is in some way interconnected, it seems a breach of a fundamental human right that the citizens are unable to discuss, or remain informed of developments in a case that goes right to the very heart of government and concerns the relationship between the state and the individual. The inspiration for Inspector George Zammit came from this stark environment of secrecy, lack of transparency, and deep-seated corruption—a world where impunity reigns. George is no hero or crusader; he is an ordinary family man, a policeman simply trying to do his job. Yet, he is always thrust into adventures not of his own making, forced to confront powerful forces determined to bend and shape him. In his world, the moral compass is broken: good people do bad things, and bad people do good things. Inspector George Zammit constantly finds himself in a moral quandary, yearning for a quiet life while the turbulent tides of Maltese society drag him into dilemmas with no easy answers. In the meantime, get your guidebooks, pack a hat and sunscreen and enjoy the best of Old street in Valletta Malta

The Island of Malta – what you really need to know before you pack your sunscreen!

AJ Aberford

I moved to Malta some ten years ago, but it was not until the killing of a high-profile investigative journalist in 2017 that I turned my gaze away from its architectural heritage, intriguing history, and other tourist charms to take an interest in the Maltese political scene. Little did I realise that only a year or two later, this interest would inspire my debut series, the Inspector George Zammit crime and adventure books.

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