The Pirate

Leaving behind a dowdy northern winter for the warming delights of the French Riviera, Martin and his three student friends soon find their feet, turning a tidy profit as beach-bum salesmen and taking to the joys of life by the Mediterranean with relish. Martin soon gets addicted to those delights, jacks in his degree and goes down deeper into a life less ordinary – scuba-diving, bed-hopping and bar-keeping his way into corners and out again.

Out on the high seas, on board the laden ‘Anne’, ship’s surgeon Martin is looking for the fresh start a life on the ocean wave can afford a man with a problematic past. As his captain steers his precious cargo – but not his crew – to safety through a raging, swelling storm and onward to the riches of the uncharted African coast, Martin comes to realize that down deeper lie secrets, desires and freedoms of uncanny power.

The laws seem different out on the ocean, criss-crossing the Mediterranean or hugging Africa’s shore, couriering yachts or cocaine, trafficking in spices or more human contraband. Living outside the dry land’s dry laws is liberating, but, as Martin discovers, the lawgivers and the lawkeepers always turn up, looking for their justice.

Christopher Wallace, the prize-winning author of The Pied Piper’s Poison and The Resurrection Club, tells an exhilarating pair of stories that reflect off each other like the sun off the sea to illuminate just how a man – with all his principles and compromises, desires and doubts – can find honour and more in piracy.