Hammond Innes · 1982 · thriller

Hammond Innes's 1982 novel. A very large crude carrier loses power and goes onto the rocks near Land's End, and the wife of an ex-merchant seaman dies trying to burn the oil off the water. Convinced the grounding was deliberate, Trevor Rodin follows the missing crew from Lloyd's records out to the Gulf, into a war and a trade in expendable tankers.

1. 1
   Land's End

   The tanker Petros Jupiter loses her engines and drifts onto the rocks below a Cornish cottage, and the oil comes ashore - and Karen Rodin dies in an attempt to burn it off the water before it kills the coast.

2. 2
   London

   At Lloyd's, Rodin works through casualty records and crew lists and finds a pattern: ships insured beyond their worth, crews who vanish between ports, and owners whose names change faster than their hulls.

3. 3
   Dubai

   The trail runs to the Gulf, where old tankers are bought, renamed and loaded, and where a man asking about a specific crew is quickly noticed by people with an interest in the question not being pursued.

4. 4
   The Strait of Hormuz

   In the Strait, with a war on and every loaded tanker a target, Rodin finds what the Petros Jupiter was part of - and what it would mean if a very large crude carrier were put on the bottom in the narrows deliberately.