Mini review: “Dead in the Water” by Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel (audiobook edition)
I picked this originally as it was shortlisted for the FT Business Book of the Year (2022) and it had gotten some excellent reviews.
This is an investigation into the wrecking of an oil tanker off the coast of Yemen. The ship was boarded by pirates and sabotaged – at least that was the official story. When one of the people sent to assess the ship is murdered the official story starts to unravel to reveal an attempt to pull off a huge financial fraud.
The book is very good at uncovering how the world’s shipping industry works, with particular focus on how the massive vessels and their cargoes get insured. The amounts of money involved are huge (costs counted in the millions of dollars) as are the possible risks. Shipping’s importance is largely overlooked or taken for granted by most people but without insurance the industry would come to a halt and would bring the modern global economy with it.
The epicenter of the shipping insurance industry is London and in particular Lloyds of London (https://www.lloyds.com/) so it should come as no surprise that history, traditions and unconventional working practices are the norm. There’s insurance, reassurance, interested parties galore, not to mention the financial arrangements of the ship owners who position themselves behind shell companies and tax havens.
And that is why this case is particularly intriguing. It doesn’t happen very often that a case gets to court and this amount of information becomes available.
This is a very well written book and does an excellent job of shining a light on an industry which doesn’t get a lot of mainstream attention. However, as much as I would like to say that I agree with other reviews which state that it “has the feel of a thriller” (Sunday Times) or “reads like a fast-paced thriller” (The Times) or has “a thriller-like narrative” (Financial Times) I’m afraid that I found that it got itself bogged down in the innumerable details and the many people involved. Perhaps it would have been easier to follow if I had read the book rather than listened to it but I found that I was not be able to keep track of the various names and their roles which led to periods of confusion.
It’s a real shame. I was ready for the book to blow me away and it didn’t quite do that. This is a four star book rather than a five star book. I would still recommend it to people as it is a very good story and a strong piece of journalism – just be prepared to concentrate as you get towards the end.
Also:
• BBC: The Case of the Brillante Virtuoso
• BBC: Deep Waters: The hidden world of global shipping
• BBC: Lost At Sea (a podcast about another incident at sea – recommended)
• Bloomberg (by the authors of the book):
Spare Cycles 