Non-fiction review: The Good Mothers

The Good Mothers

Alex Perry
William Collins $32.99

Estimates of the wealth of the 'Ndrangheta vary from a 50 to 100 billion dollar annual turnover. The biggest mafia in the world. Lea Garofalo, born into the mafia and married to one, spent years on the run from the mob with her daughter, but turned herself in to the police and testified against them. It's one of the multiple stories running through this tense, thriller-like examination of the 'Ndrangheta's ruthless modus operandi and the barbaric enforcement of its code of silence. It's also about the magistrate, Alessandra Cerreti, who brought many of them to justice and recognised that the organisation's medieval treatment of women was its Achilles heel: Garofalo's "disappearance" ("white shotgun" – murder without trace) becoming a well-publicised case that led to popular anti-Mafia protests. Good mothers, seriously gutsy women.