Entertaining, complex novel

THE TEARS OF DARK

WATER Corban Addison

Quercus DANIEL PARKER is a successful DC power-broker; he’s gone the conventional route and followed his father into law.

In fact, the only thing he has ever done that has really surprised him is the night he approached his now wife, Vanessa, after a violin concert. Vanessa is a doctor with a great practice, the family lives in a lovely house and on the face of it all is well. But, beneath the waters, there are eddies of discontent.

The couple have become estranged from each other and both seem to have doubts about whether their marriage has a future. They are also faced with problems with their son, Quentin, who is about to go off to college. He is a withdrawn young man who has had a run-in with the law over drugs, having been set up as a patsy by a friend. Daniel’s father is a powerful man with powerful connections.

So far a family drama, but add to the mix the fact that a group of Somalian pirates have just tried and failed to hijack a tanker – and have lost the battle, losing their commander in chief and the link to the money-man back home – and you have a frisson of tension at the beginning of the book because Daniel and Quinton are on a bonding sailing trip and are in the Seychelles, about to depart for Cape Town. Vanessa may or may not join them in Cape Town.

Daniel receives the news that the pirates have fled towards the Seychelles, and is keen to hire someone to sail their boat to Cape Town and fly to meet it there, but Quinton has come alive on the voyage and won’t hear of it.

It’s not surprising that what happens next is that the pirates find the Parker yacht and board it, hoping to take them back to Somalia and be paid a ransom by the family.

They are a motley crew with one man asserting his leadership. Ismael has his own reasons for being a pirate and they are grounded in the collapse of Somalia as a state and the loss of his sister Yasmin.

He is an intelligent young man filled with faith and has no intention of harming his captives. He wants to get the money and get out. Not so some of the other characters on board with him.

The US sends warships out to surround the yacht and a team of SEALS. If at this point you think this is a book about America being right in everything and the amazing might of a militaristic country with everything coming out with them on top, you’d be wrong.

Corban Addison adds another layer to the book with the addition of the FBI’s top hostage negotiator, Paul Derrick, who is dispatched to try to secure the release of the hostages through negotiation. He is a well-rounded character who is dedicated to his work and his sister Megan.

What Addison has done is write an intelligent book and a well-researched one at that on the complexity of Somalian piracy and the atrocities visited on the country by al-Shabaab.

The conflicts between Paul and the commander of the SEALS are well fleshed out and tension rises in the southern oceans.

It goes without saying that there are hitches and power struggles, and the second half of the book deals with the American law system following a failure to release the hostages in a satisfactory manner.

Megan, Paul’s sister, takes on the case of defending Ismael, but she is faced with a complex web that obscures the truth of why he has turned to piracy.

This is a big fat book that weaves in a family story and a military story at the same time. Addison does not falter in handling a plethora of information and the balance and fairness of the novel to Somalia is somewhat surprising from an American novelist.

Read it for entertainment and you will find yourself pondering the machinations of the world’s largest democracy, and who really wields the power.