The Dark Fleet

Steel does not perjure itself.

Theo Valcourt has built fourteen years on that rule. A former chief engineer turned marine casualty surveyor, he finds the lie in the metal when shipowners swear to fires, groundings and engine failures that never happened.

Then the tanker Aurora Grace goes down in the Arabian Sea. Fourteen crew are pulled from liferafts. Eight are lost with a capsized raft. The ship is insured in London for $38,000,000, and a Lloyd's hull underwriter asks for him by name to confirm the loss.

But there is no oil on the water. The ship's last positions hold a perfect eleven knots through a supposed fire. And the lifeboat pulled from the sea wears fresh paint over somebody else's name.

From Fujairah to Piraeus, Singapore to Manila, five lives close in on one truth. A surveyor hunts a wreck that may not exist. A third engineer fights to send proof home to a wife who has been told he is dead. An investigator holding eight death claims has her own questions about Theo. A shipowner runs. A fixer sells his services to anyone who pays.

What is a ship's identity worth? And what is a man's worth when someone else has already sold it?