A Dark Night Offshore: A Deirdre O'Hara File

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

A ship, the Kyrious Mercury, has been lost at sea, and 25crew members have gone to their deaths with her. A tragedy, but was itindeed, as claimed, an accident? Suspicious circumstances surrounding the escape of seven of the men aboard, in one now-missing lifeboat, have forcibly reminded the insurance company concerned of a similar tragedy not so long before. Deirdre O’Hara, a Montreal lawyer specializing in marine insurance, is called in to investigate. She immediately suspects barratry, “a fraudulent breach of duty on the part of a master of a ship or of the mariners to the injury of the ship or cargo.”

It will be difficult to prove her case, in which millions of dollars are at stake. Meticulously plotted and detailed, Dark Night Offshore follows the investigation of a cruel and loathsome crime, step by dangerous step. This, the second Deirdre O’Hara mystery, will leave readers with a taste for off-beat procedural investigation eager for her return.