FICTION: SWIMMING WITH SHARKS – Newspaper

Historically a rarity that solely the elite loved, shark fin soup all of the sudden fell inside the attain of the overall inhabitants after the Chinese language financial miracle had taken the world by storm. Extra greenback billionaires emerged in China than in some other nation and, quickly, all wedding ceremony banquets throughout the social strata started that includes the delicacy. Individuals used it as means to flaunt their cash, and social pressures made the soup vital standing image. Consequently, many countries bordering seas started to contribute to the slaughter of sharks. Any shark turned truthful recreation and the stability of nature wobbled as tens of hundreds of thousands of the ocean creatures had been killed yearly.

As with every high-value merchandise, shark fins quickly attracted the eye of organised crime, beginning with the triads in Hong Kong. The nation turned a holding and staging publish, the place virtually all of the cruelly severed fins had been gathered, dried and forwarded to consumers throughout China. Sharks badly wanted a human champion, or develop into extinct.

The protagonist of Charles Barker’s new novel, The Maritime Betrayal, is 30-year-old Claire Armstrong. Launched at age 12 to diving and the ocean world by her father — a marine biologist and oceanographer — she grows up fantasising about mermaids, and later joins the Particular Boat Service (SBS), an elite unit of the UK’s Royal Navy. A couple of decade later, she quits the SBS, holding the rank of captain, and joins her father’s non-governmental organisation referred to as the Safety of Sea Creatures (POSC), based mostly in Hong Kong.

The POSC’s work clashes straight with the unlawful fishing and profitable shark fin commerce, which is managed by highly effective and ruthless organised crime syndicates which have tentacles all all over the world. Because of this, in his makes an attempt to guard marine life, Armstrong senior — regardless of his cautious and diplomatic strategy — makes the unsuitable form of violent enemies in a number of international locations.

Not lengthy after she arrives in Hong Kong, Claire finds herself pissed off by the POSC’s failure to make a lot progress in curbing the unlawful commerce in shark fins. After a heated assembly and altercation with the federal government authorities accountable (many officers are on the payroll of the criminals) successful squad is despatched to the Armstrong dwelling.

A massacre ensues however, due to her navy coaching, Claire not solely survives the assault, she additionally manages to kill all of the 4 assassins. Her father, nevertheless, just isn’t so fortunate. Claire then vows to seek out her father’s killers and avenge her loss in her personal manner, regardless of the opposition of the NGO’s peaceable veteran administration that has loyally labored together with her father for years.

That the fins had been gristly and tasteless, including nothing to the flavours of the soup broth, made no distinction. Consuming shark fin soup was all about standing, and so its recognition and costs soared. — Excerpt from the ebook

When Claire turns to her former colleagues from the elite drive in her warfare towards the highly effective worldwide community of criminals (and their accomplices within the authorities in addition to police), Jason, bored together with his comfy and profitable civilian job, is the primary to volunteer for her mission.

After intensive analysis, the duo identifies the native gang behind the homicide of Claire’s father and inflicts heavy losses on the gang’s operations and the warehouses the place the dear contraband items are saved. Additionally they uncover clues to different affiliate gangs. A warfare with the crime syndicates begins, which takes Claire and her rising variety of comrades to the excessive seas on extra bold and bloody operations. Costa Rica, Japan, China, and different locations develop into the battlegrounds, and so they prepare and smuggle weapons and explosives for these operations by way of intelligent scheming.

In the meantime, Claire learns that each one these prison organisations are covertly managed by the Campbell Buying and selling Firm, based mostly in Hong Kong and owned by Sir Iain Campbell, a formidable pillar of society.

The climax of the novel takes place within the chapter ‘Motion at Sea’. Plans for a sea battle to destroy a whaling vessel are engineered and put into motion. The detailed commando operation, with strategic deception manoeuvres by a comparatively small crew of operatives, culminates within the dramatic destruction and sinking of the goal vessel.

The characters within the novel — together with the crews of each the perimeters, good and dangerous, in addition to their handlers and different gamers — are dropped at life with outstanding dexterity, portrayed in a most energetic and believable method. The relationships and interplay between the varied units of characters are proven realistically and convincingly.

What makes The Maritime Betrayal a compelling novel is meticulous and thorough analysis and the extremely plausible situation it constructs. The technical specs of ships, weapons, sea manoeuvres, the organisational buildings of the crime syndicates, varied operational deployments and underwater marine life are so vividly described that, at instances, one feels as if one is watching an entrancing and suspenseful documentary quite than studying a novel.

Barker is an expert of the resort business and has labored in a number of international locations, together with Pakistan. He’s additionally a motivational speaker and actively engaged with NGOs working towards the inhumane observe of shark-finning. The Maritime Betrayal is his third full-length novel, preceded by The Brown Envelope Membership and The Iraqi Deception.

The reviewer is a contract author and translator of Freedom of the Press: The Struggle on Phrases 1977-1978; and Mr. and Mrs. Jinnah: The Marriage that Shook India, in English and Urdu respectively

The Maritime Betrayal
By Charles Barker
Farman, Islamabad
ISBN: 979-8646032608
336pp.

Printed in Daybreak, Books & Authors, November 22nd, 2020