My life, my love and my lady is the sea

Coming from a port city, I have a particular attraction to sea novels. I used to think about a maritime career until I realized I got easily seasick. Oh well. I saw a few positive reviews for the Western Limit of the World, a maritime thriller set on a chemical tanker, so I picked it up. The title refers the Greek view that beyond the Western Limit of the world (or just past Gibraltar) lay the afterworld, and you would either go to heaven or hell. The main characters are headed to one or the other, and you soon believe it is a ship of the damned. They have stolen a ship with its load and are trying to sell the chemicals where they can. Of course, this isn't too easy and it takes them to the shadier parts of the world including a West Africa in open revolt. The characters are interesting, if not totally developed. One is a religious self-flagellant who skipped town after trying to dig up his grandmother. One is a combat vet who has seen a few too many deaths (102,000 by his reckoning). One is a Dutch-West African who has relationships with both of these two.

The little maritime details are fun, like having to repair a leaking fuel line with a blow torch, trying to cope with super malarial mosquitoes and bribery of port officials. The author has a good deal of maritime experience and the details ring true. The direction of the plot is pretty obvious, but I liked the descriptions of the ups and downs of this sea-heist novel.

If you want to get a quick overview of the merchant marine life, John McPhee's Looking For a Ship is a good choice. The book covers the end of the US maritime era and the challenges facing people trying to work in the field. McPhee is an essayist who has written on topics as diverse as smuggling art out of Soviet Russia, life in Alaska, and oranges. His skill is talking to the right people and finding the interesting details in any topic. McPhee is addictive. His books are short and once you read a few, you want to read them all.