Coaster — George Foy

Written in a style of galvanic energy, Foy's second thriller, successor to the highly praised Asia Rip, features the captain of a British coastal freighter that sinks in high seas after its cargo has been tampered with. When his insurance company refuses to honor his claim, John Penrose, social outsider and skilled mariner, sets out to discover why, not only to avoid bankruptcy but to salvage his honor. But while Penrose is uncovering a web of reinsurance scams being spun by some of Lloyd's top underwriters, and even his wife's banker father, he finds himself the target of a series of brutal murder attemptson the Amsterdam waterfront, in the West Indies, in a booby-trapped cargo ship, down an abandoned Cornish mine and elsewhere. Foy can describe a classy cocktail party, an unscrupulous bankers' board meeting and the steamy hold of a doomed ship with equal assurance. He's a master of violent action, but also expert in the ways of seafaring and high-level insurance broking, and a shrewd observer of human psychology besides. His story is a humdinger. January