Pirates of Aden

Review by Nancy
This “could happen any moment” novel takes us up right into the headlines. Pirates in the Gulf of Aden taking ships for their cargo and ransoming same. Daniel Rasic has done a bang-up job of making his pirates come right off the pages into your face when Sami and his Somalian crew take over a ship of military weapons. He has problems and his nephew is shot. They must find a doctor or the boy will die.

Back in 1999, a doctor was monitoring a “patient” who was being interrogated by one of the best/worst in the FBI - Steve Sidwell. Sidwell loves torture and is quite good at it but the prisoner survives and Sidwell ends up being sent to prison for his actions. The doctor is killed crossing the street leaving a son and a grieving widow and all goes on as it should.

Sami and his nephew end up in the town of Bossasso in the Republic of Puntland in Somalia. A nowhere kind of place but it does have a medical clinic run by two doctor: Ellen Al-Hamadi and Dr. Paul Alban, friends first and now lovers. They are used to saving lost causes: kids who walk on land mines, boys who are shot trying to hijack a ship, women used and abused. They take them all in and try their hardest to help them. Sometimes they lose – like today with Ali.

Things come into place soon after the crew arrives at Paul’s clinic: after all he knows Sami – he’s the one giving them info on the ships they take. Why? Long tale and that is what makes up the meat of this book. Paul and Ellen aren’t quite what they seem and the people around them are finding that out quite quickly. A man named Haddad from Paul’s past is most eager to make his reacquaintance – they have much to talk over.

This book is fascinating: politics, backstabbing, arrangements, crosses front and double – everything I love in a novel and it doesn’t disappoint at all! Congratulations to Daniel Rasic on an excellent story!