When a luxury yacht called My Last Hope glides into the Turkish port of Marmaris, art historian–turned–insurance man Spenser Ratcliffe thinks he’s filming superyachts on vacation. Instead, he stumbles into a covert pipeline moving lost Old Masters—some plundered by the Soviets, others freshly stolen from war in Ukraine—toward a private collection on the Black Sea. A Turkish Coastguard patrol is blown apart on open water and Spenser’s tight-knit group of old friends is shattered. One will drown. One will fall. One will lie. And Spenser, a recovering alcoholic who can’t trust his own memory, becomes the only witness who won’t stop asking what really happened.

Across Marmaris and Ankara, Riga and London, a web of power brokers tightens: a Russian billionaire with a superyacht that doesn’t officially exist; a celebrated curator guarding a quiet palace of paintings; and a defecting colonel who knows exactly which masterpieces bought which favours.

The Last Hope is a propulsive, elegantly written thriller that blends the high stakes of a geopolitical conspiracy with the intimate wreckage of grief, addiction, and love. From candlelit galleries to the steel decks of a yacht built for secrets, the novel moves with cinematic pace and a reporter’s eye for detail, building to an epilogue where the final, quiet question isn’t “Who did it?” but “What was it worth?”

Perfect for fans of Daniel Silva’s art-and-espionage intrigue, Steve Berry’s historical puzzles, Martin Cruz Smith’s Moscow-shadowed conspiracies, and the maritime thrills of Clive Cussler—told with the psychological bite of a contemporary literary thriller.