The Outlaw Sea is a bit misleading as a title. It is not the sea which is an outlaw. It is those who operate upon it. It is a great many of those who operate upon it. This is a text which presents a series of stories about the various types of outlaw activities taking place upon the high seas of the world.
The book kicks off at the energetic rate of a high-octane action film with an absolutely gripping inside look at the circumstances leading to the maritime disaster involving an all-purpose tanker nearly six-hundred-feet long called the Kristal. It ends with a story of Indian pirates. While some readers will surely be every bit as fascinated by the story of the pirates, its placement in the book is kind of like the fourth sequel to blockbuster action film that tries to wring fading interest by turning the franchise into something more complex and cerebral. One appreciates the effort, of course, but after three fast-paced stories focusing on the big picture, the slow pacer pace examining things in greater detail just doesn’t have the same zip.
This is not necessarily to put down the last forty pages of the book, but the inescapable fact is that the story of piracy involving the Alondra Rainbow which is situated near the middle of the book really fulfills the purpose intended by the concluding story and in a much more exciting and interesting manner. That is ultimately the one weakness of the book. It begins at a heady pace that never really slows down: the Kristal sinking is like Das Boot, the Alondra Rainbow is like a heist film on water and the tragedy of the Estonia is like if Titanic had been directed by a competent filmmaker. By contrast, even though a story of Indian piracy sounds like it should be a fitting climax, it kind of leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. Better simply to have shifted it to some point earlier than to cut it altogether, but depending on it as his curtain-closer is the one single misstep in what is otherwise a gripping page-turner of non-fiction that almost reads like a novel.
