Neapolitan Camorra, planned a massive motorway bomb to kill the bestselling writer Roberto Saviano

Neapolitan Camorra, planned a massive motorway bomb to kill the bestselling writer Roberto Saviano, the author of a big expose on their activities, as he travelled with his armed Carabinieri bodyguards. The plot, revealed by one of the Casalesi clan supergrasses, has resulted in a flurry of arrests and yesterday, asked by text message if he was OK, Saviano sent the Herald a simple, one-word return: "resisto" (meaning "I'm resisting" or "I'm still standing"). Saviano, 29, interviewed in secret in Naples in June, has lived a nomadic existence in hiding for more than two years after he wrote his blockbuster exposé of the vicious Neapolitan Mafia. The book, Gomorrah , has been turned into a movie that won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes this year and will be Italy's entry in the best foreign film category at this year's Oscars. The bomb plot was revealed by the supergrass, Carmine Schiavone, who admitted that the book's revelations had infuriated the Casalesi clan bosses and a plan to blow up Saviano and his police escorts was expected before Christmas. Schiavone has been given a new identity and lives in hiding, like Saviano, but with more than 20 armed guards to protect him. He is the cousin of the jailed Casalesi family boss, Francesco Schiavone, who has pledged to murder his relative for turning on the clan. Carmine Schiavone informed police that the plot to kill Saviano had "moved into the operational phase". The idea was to plant a roadway bomb on the motorway between Rome and Naples and to kill the young author and his bodyguards, who have become his friends and only companions. Saviano has been assigned more plain-clothes officers and is moved from house to house. Franco Roberti, the chief anti-Mafia investigatorin Naples, said the author had been under threat for some time: "We know that he is exposed to a major risk and we have placed adequate protective measures around him". It is understood that Neapolitan police are linking the plot to another piece of information provided by another informer, which suggested a Camorra fugitive, Giuseppe Setalo, was known to be searching for a large quantity of explosives.