Maelstrom

I have always been a keen collector of whirlpools – the Old Sow in Eastport, Maine, the Corryvreckan off the Isle of Jura, and most of all the Maelstrom in the Lofoten Islands, immortalised by Edgar Allen Poe (who never saw it) I am also disgusted by Norway’s whaling policies, an exploitation of natural resources that dates from an earlier, more fascistic age. These two things together lie at the root of this book.

Seventy-eight-year-old Ernie Johnson, scrap dealer, Spanish Civil War veteran and dyed-in-the wool leftie, sails towards Ireland in his rustbucket freighter Worker’s Paradise. When Customs searches the ship, they find a huge arms cache. Ernie says he has been framed, but he would, wouldn’t he? The only person who believes his innocence is his nephew, Fred Hope. And Fred is no saint himself, having a dodgy past in ecoterrorism and other blood sports. But Fred investigates. And finds himself way over his head in some lethal business. Including the Russian mafia, stolen art treasures, whale poachers, and political ghosts from the Fascist past. Oh, and the North Sea…

“An ingenious story, well written and so detailed in its description of the Norwegian Sea that you can feel the chill in your bones” Mail on Sunday