If you like to lose yourself in a strapping yarn that is well told then this book - another outstanding adventure from one of the world's best loved storytellers - is for you. The challenge facing established authors such as Wilbur Smith in this, by our reckoning, his thirty-second book (his first, 'When The Lion Feeds', having been published in 1964), is how to stay fresh and relevant in today's world. In the same way as John le Carre made his name through stories set in a Cold War that no longer exists, so Wilbur Smith has had to move on from his early African settings. The world has changed.
Thus, we can believe that an author with such an extensive canon behind him and in his fifth decade of writing can develop characters and carry a story. But is the context relevant? Does the story represent the modern world in which it is set? Is the reader interested?
In this case, the answer has to be 'yes'. Our news media tells us that piracy is prevalent off coastlines such as Somalia, we know that these coastlines 'belong' to countries whose cultures, and behavioural values, are different from ours - and now we know that the elderly Wilbur Smith can weave such modern technology as a Blackberry into his tale!
Hazel Bannock is the owner of the Bannock Oil Corp, one of the major global oil producers. While cruising in the Indian Ocean, her yacht is hijacked by Somalian pirates and her nineteen year old daughter Cayla kidnapped. Major Hector Cross is an ex-SAS operative and the man behind Cross Bow Security, the company contracted to Bannock Oil to provide all their security. His loyalty to the Bannock family goes beyond the call of duty. The pirates demand a crippling ransom for Cayla's release, and complicated political and diplomatic sensitivities render the major powers incapable of intervening. With growing evidence of the horrific torture to which Cayla is being subjected, Hazel calls on Hector to help her rescue her daughter. Between them, Hazel and Hector are determined to take the law into their own hands.
Wilbur Smith was born in Central Africa in 1933. He was educated at Michaelhouse and Rhodes University. He became a full-time writer in 1964 after the successful publication of When the Lion Feeds, and has since written nearly thirty novels, all meticulously researched on his numerous expeditions worldwide. His books are now translated into twenty-six languages.
Wilbur Smith lives in London and continues to have an abiding concern for the peoples and wildlife of his native continent, an interest strongly reflected in his novels.
