Vividly and beautifully told, often deeply shocking, The Honoured Society is the true story of one woman's personal journey to the dark heart of the Mafia. In 1979, having been fascinated by Coppola's masterpiece The Godfather, twenty - year - old Petra Reski jumped into her car and drove from her home in Germany to the Mafia - stronghold of Sicily; she wanted to see for herself the stark truth behind the glamorous fiction. In 2007, six Mafioso were shot dead outside a pizzeria in the North German town of Duisburg; in thirty years, the influence and violence of organised crime had only grown, but now Reski would be called to report on the scene as one of the world's foremost Mafia experts. In The Honoured Society, Petra Reski exposes just how far Italy's mafias permeate everyday life across Europe. Through her firsthand accounts of meeting crooked priests and heroic victims, wet - eyed wives and murderous husbands, she also tells the human stories and, too often, the human costs, of the Mafia's ongoing bloody war.