Submerged (Paperback)

Who can stop a maniacal Russian and his private army? Surely not a handful of Cape Town gangsters and an Investment Banker/ex-scuba diving instructor. Submerged is an international thriller traversing the pirate-controlled waters off the Horn of Africa, the lethal world of Russian organized crime, the buzzing financial capital London, the Rhino slaughter fields of South Africa, the decadence concealed below the brittle veneer of the beautiful City of Cape Town with its adjacent Cape Flats ganglands and the icy, shark-infested waters of the Atlantic.

During a high-risk scuba dive at one of the deep dive-sites of the Red Sea, Sophia Popova, a beautiful but troubled Russian heiress, fails in her suicide attempt. A love affair develops between her and her rescuer, dive instructor Leon Jacobs, and she arranges that Leon, also a bright economics graduate, joins a major Investment Bank in London. The Bank is owned by Russian billionaire and Sophia’s father, Bogdan Popov, who made it big from political favouritism, corruption and innovative methods of getting rid of competitors. The love-sick and gullible Leon soon starts drowning in the international syndicated crime world of Popov whose motto is: ‘Deal or Death’.

Meanwhile, Franklin Benjamin, a notorious Cape Town gangster, but now retired, tries to live a sober life as a commercial fisherman in a small village off the West Coast of South Africa. But when Franklin’s and Leon’s paths cross and, after a series of shocking events disrupt the peace and quiet of Franklin’s world, he has to make the impossible decision whether to rise up from his hibernation and mobilise his gang.

Will Leon escape with his life from the global-reaching claws of Popov? And where will Sophia find the courage and strength to slay the inner demons ruling her existence?