3 out of 4 stars
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Reg Barker and his brother Jack, Englishmen sailing in Indonesian waters, have some uninvited visitors: pirates. What follows is a good ‘ole sea battle with guns and fire and explosions, and not everyone comes out alive. Only this isn’t 1696, it’s 1996. And the pirates use speedboats and AK-47s. But Reg and Jack have rather checkered pasts themselves, and one of them quickly and easily falls in with the very pirates that attacked them. With this James Bond-esque drop-you-smack-dab-into-the-action opening, Poto Paddu flings the reader into a tale of piracy, corruption, adventure, and revenge in the seas and environs of exotic Indonesia. Written by Dick Allan, it was published in 2016 by SilverWood Books and is available both as a download and paperback from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Subtitled “A gripping tale of piracy in paradise,” the story focuses on three well-to-do English couples, each with their own yacht, on an around-the-world cruise together. The narrative picks up their journey as they depart from Darwin, Australia and head to the idyllic waters of Indonesia. But as they near the island of Sumbawa, one of the yachts encounters these modern day corsairs – the initial events of the story, related above, dovetail into this – and there is murder and abuse of the most heinous kind. The rest of the story follows these Brits as they plot their revenge, navigating not just the waters of Indonesia, but the corrupt local police, who are less interested in justice than they ought to be.
The story focuses mainly on Alison Harvey, who was on the yacht that was savagely attacked by the pirates. In her personal journey of revenge, she meets a local girl, Ngo, who has her own reasons for wanting these men, who have set up headquarters in her cove and village of Poto Paddu, brought to justice. Not trusting the local police, Alison, Ngo, and the supporting cast work together to try to find the baddies and exact their own brand of punishment on them. Throw in an extramarital affair among the yachtspeople, and you have a story that will have you guessing a bit as to how it will all turn out.
I’m indisposed to disclose much more, although the blurb on Amazon reveals a few additional details (proceed there at your own risk). The story moves rather slowly for my taste, and there are scant few twists and turns to the plot. It plods along at a steady pace without many surprises, and some plot points, while not wholly requiring the reader to suspend disbelief, are just a bit hard to swallow. But I never lost interest, and the ending is, if not enthralling, at least satisfying.
Character portrayal is adequate at best; they are certainly more than cardboard cutouts in front of the scenery, but it’s difficult to really bond or sympathize with any of them. They just go through the more-or-less expected motions to get to a rather unsurprising ending, like actors in a play who are reciting their lines for the umpteenth time and at the same time thinking about where to go for dinner after the curtain comes down and they can all leave through the backstage door. Character development is generally stunted, and the characters are not fully realized; with the exception of Alison and the pirate leader, the personalities peopling the story just aren’t terribly interesting.
Each chapter title is a date (ex. “Monday 9 September”), which simply allows the reader to follow the events in chronological order. The narrative is completely linear in structure, with no flashbacks or other things with which to get sidetracked. Written in third person omniscient POV, the reader can track the movements of all the principal characters – protagonists and antagonists – and know things that they don’t. The author, according to the blurb in the book, is an accomplished sailor and sailed his own yacht to the very setting in which the story takes place; this is evident from the specific references to various islands, villages, coves, and waterways as well as descriptions of their locations and other details related to Indonesian people and life. This adds a splash of realism to the story while at the same time bogging it down a bit; the average reader will get a bit lost in the geographic details, but the setting remains very much a part of the narrative.
The book is reasonably well written in a clear, unambiguous style. Although the writing is a bit flat, it does the job, doesn’t get in the way, and I didn’t find one mechanical or grammatical error in all 288 pages. The story, although not full of non-stop action and adventure and not full of surprises, is solidly told and held my interest. I am happy to give Poto Paddu 3 out of 4 stars. I can recommend it to those who like a bit of adventure on the high seas, exotic locales, and a logical, easy-to-follow story with a satisfying conclusion.
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Poto Paddu
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You have a real talent for giving constructive criticism and zeroing in on the little things that make a book special. Nice job.
