In the wake of his best-selling thriller Deadly Straits, which drew comparisons to Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, and W.E.B. Griffin, newcomer R.E. McDermott is back with an action-packed sequel.

Dugan thought Somali pirates were bad news. Then it got worse.

As Tom Dugan and Alex Kairouz, his partner and best friend, struggle to ransom their ship and crew from murderous Somali pirates, things take a turn for the worse. A US Navy contracted tanker with a full load of jet fuel is also hijacked, not by garden variety pirates, but by terrorists with links to Al Qaeda, changing the playing field completely.

With a possible link between piracy and terrorism now in play, the US and British governments order the halt of all negotiations for captive ships, and enraged pirates ratchet up the mistreatment of the captive crews. When one of his crewmen is murdered in front of him on a live video feed, a frustrated Dugan takes matters into his own hands and starts his own rescue operation, only to stumble across something far more sinister - a rogue salvage operation for a long lost weapon of mass destruction. Isolated at sea on an old tanker previously destined for the ship breakers, Dugan and his hastily assembled little force of Russian mercenaries find themselves the last line of defense between the world and a terrifying bio-weapon.

Weaving historical fact with speculative fiction, Deadly Coast takes the listener from London board rooms into the very real world of modern day pirates - and their victims.