The Requiem Shark: A Novel

The Year is 1719.  The Golden Age of Piracy is about to end.   Based on the last voyage of the most successful captain in the history of  piracy, The Requiem Shark is the tale of a young recruit, William Williams, and his forced apprenticeship to Bartholomew Roberts, slaver turned pirate captain.  Acting as biographer to the captain and fiddler to the crew, Williams sails from West Africa to the Caribbean, recording their conflicts with the mariners, merchants, whores and tribes who populate the ends of the known world. Held together by greed and the desire for independence, the crew sways between treachery and allegiance, violence and dreams of redemption as they quest for the Juliette, a treasure ship so wealthy its capture will guarantee all their fortunes. Williams is slowly accepted by the crew but his only true confidants are the learned Doctor Scudamore and, Innocent, a former Yoruban slave and the sole member of his own peculiar  religion.  But every new adventure takes Williams farther from his urbane origins and challenges his belief in himself as an impartial biographer, morally superior to the impoverished and illiterate men that surround him.  Gradually but inevitably seduced into the pirates' world, Williams struggles to understand his own participation in -- and occasional affinity for -- the brutality of their existence.  Meanwhile, Roberts's bloody success and growing fame bring the British Navy down upon them as the novel surges towards its surprising, spine-tingling conclusion. A rousing literary debut in the rich tradition of Patrick O'Brian, The Requiem Shark will transport readers to a distant age and make them feel the wind at their backs.