Djibouti - Elmore Leonard

Dara Barr, documentary filmmaker, is at the top of her game. She's covered neo-Nazis and post-Katrina New Orleans, but now she's looking for an even bigger challenge.

So Dara and her right-hand man Xavier head to Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, to tackle modern-day pirates. But they soon find a whole lot more than they bargained for and quickly learn that almost no one in Djibouti is what he seems.
A mob of colourful characters patrols the seas, including a pirate chief with a taste for fine cars and an Oxford-educated sheik with scams of his own. And then there's the gun-toting Texan billionaire Billy Wynn, and James Russell, an American al-Qaeda convert who wants to blow up something big. As hijacked tankers line up like floating bombs, Dara and Xavier know it's time for a showdown .

'A vibrant contemporary thriller - exhilarating read, full of fun' Sunday Times
'Deliciously to-the-point dialogue . . . highly entertaining' Independent on Sunday