HMS Medusa is an obsolete frigate with an ill-assorted crew and an insecure captain. Why has she been dispatched under secret orders to be a sitting duck in one of the most vital ports of the Mediterranean?

Drawn into a close involvement with the Medusa's captain, Gareth Lloyd Jones, ex-adventurer Mike Steele begins a dangerous quest for answers. As past and present combine in a series of violent events, Steele finds himself at the centre of an international crisis to which only Lloyd Jones and the Medusa hold the key.

Autorentext

Hammond Innes (1914 - 1998) was an English adventure author who wrote over thirty novels as well as children's and travel books.

Ralph Hammond Innes was born in Horsham, Sussex. Educated at Cranbrook School in Kent he left in 1931 to work as a journalist, initially with the Financial Times. The Doppelganger, his first novel was published in 1937. In WWII he served in the Royal Artillery, eventually rising to the rank of Major. During the war a number of his books were published. After being demobbed in 1946 he worked full-time as a writer, achieving a number of early successes. His had sixteen further novels published before 1960, producing books in a regular sequence of six months travel and research and then six months of writing, many featuring the sea. His rate of work was reduced from the 1960s but was still substantial, and he became more interested in ecological themes. Innes continued writing until just before his death.