Being a journalist who investigates corruption is one of the more dangerous professions. Daphne Caruana Galizia is one who has been silenced.

The car bombing that killed investigative reporter Daphne Caruana Galizia has left Malta in shock, alarmed that organised crime and political vendettas may have spiralled out of control.

“There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate,” she wrote in her last blog post, published shortly before her car exploded.

Caruana Galizia, 53, died near her home in Bidnija, a village in northern Malta.

She had relentlessly accused various Maltese politicians and other officials of corruption in her popular Running Commentary blog, and had been sued several times.

Now she won’t be doing that any more.

She was seen as one of Malta’s most influential writers, commented Herman Grech, Times of Malta online editor.

About 3,000 people honoured her in a candle-lit vigil in Sliema, near the capital Valletta, the night after she died.

The night after she was killed.

In his condemnation of the murder a German Green MEP, Sven Giegold, said“such incidents bring to mind Putin’s Russia, not the European Union”.

Her son Matthew, himself an investigative reporter, castigated the police on Facebook, accusing the authorities of negligence for failing to prevent the “assassination”.

He called Malta “a mafia state” where “a culture of impunity has been allowed to flourish by the government”.

He described rushing to the scene and finding “my mother’s body parts all around me”.

Yet he’s not silent.