Lawless Oceans

Cell phone video goes viral, showing four men brutally killed at sea. Special investigator Karsten von Hoesslin is on a worldwide trail to track down the killers. Along the way, he confronts pirates, human traffickers and drug smugglers. In Taiwan, his investigation gets off to a rocky start. In Fiji, he encounters a web of mystery. Karsten begins to wonder where this case is heading.

The investigation has a major breakthrough, and a second video of the killings is discovered. In the Philippines, Karsten meets a former fisherman who escaped slavelike conditions. In Bangladesh, cameras expose the dark world of migrant smuggling. A father tells a harrowing story about his 15-year-old son who paid traffickers to take him to Thailand and whose fate remains unknown.

In the Philippines, the investigation heats up as Karsten tracks down more witnesses and discovers that another ship was involved. Searching for a motive, he heads to the Seychelles and encounters the dark side of a multimillion-dollar racket with a global reach: illegal fishing. But then, an unexpected clue leads him in a new direction. Could the killings have been drug related?

In Kenya, Karsten investigates a possible link between an international drug trafficking network and the killings in the video. He goes into drug gang territory to talk to dealers and smugglers. A Pakistani heroin trafficker shows how he customizes dhows with secret traps. In Mombasa, Karsten reaches out to local contacts in a bid to unmask the identity of the man who commanded the shooter’s ship.

No bodies, fingerprints, or DNA. Will Karsten be able to identify the victims in the video? The quest takes Karsten deep into Somali pirate territory. The video yields a cryptic clue that leads him to Iran. There, a ship owner identifies the dhow in the video as his. With his help, a family in Pakistan may finally get closure on the fate of their three missing sons.

With the end in sight, Karsten makes one last push to obtain further evidence to present to the authorities. He encounters incredible allegations about the sinking of the Ping Shin 101, but well-placed informants advise him against digging any further. Could there be greater, more dangerous powers at play? And will the authorities take him seriously?