Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

By: Colin Freeman

Narrated by: Stephen Perring

The true story of a retired British army officer’s private Somali-hostage rescue mission.

During the peak of the Somali piracy crisis, three ships - from Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan - were hijacked and then abandoned to their fate by their employers, who lacked the money to pay ransoms.

All would still be there, were it not for Colonel John Steed, a retired British military attaché, who launched his own private mission to free them.

At 65, Colonel Steed was hardly an ideal saviour. With no experience in hostage negotiations and no money behind him, he had to raise the ransom cash from scratch, running the operation from his spare room and ferrying million-dollar ransom payments around in the boot of his car.

Drawing on first-hand interviews, former chief foreign correspondent of The Sunday Telegraph, Colin Freeman, who has himself spent time held hostage by Somali pirates, takes listeners on an inside track into the world of hostage negotiation and one man’s heroic rescue mission.

©2021 Colin Freeman (P)2021 W F Howes

Very good

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. It's a well written account of piracy and it's victims in our modern age. Definitely worth a listen.

Wow! Thank you for sharing their stories.

My partner was on the hostage negotiation and support team. This book has deepened my understanding of their work and impact. As a westerner, it is hard to fathom how this happens in the modern world. Thank you for sharing the stories of these hostages.

Great

Only wish it was longer. Great narration and great writing. Would have loved more details from the the other two taken ships.

Reads like a high school research paper…

This could well have been an interesting nonfiction book chronicling an episode of piracy on the high seas and comparing the fate of the largely Third World crew with that of the Maersk Alabama and the crew of Captain Phillips, who had the world on tenterhooks as Navy Seals rushed to the aid of the captured tanker. In this case the crew languishes in miserable captivity while their captors attempt to negotiate an acceptable ransom, and no naval force comes dramatically to anyone’s rescue. But then…..well, I don’t actually know what happens THEN, because the book is written so simplistically that the recounting of events, which could have been intriguing is dull, dull, dull. I quit listening, lest I fall asleep in the middle of the day. DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY on this. A FAR BETTER novel covering similar subject matter is William Langewiesche’s book, The Outlaw Sea. I was hoping this book would be similar to that, but Langewiesche is a much better writer.