Max Hardberger - SEIZED

Captain Max Hardberger steals ships—cargo-carrying freighters—for a living. In the murky world of maritime law, a small bribe to a local judge in some lawless, third-world country is enough for a craft worth millions of dollars to be “legally seized” from its legitimate owner, and held for inflated or fictionalized claims levied against it. And that’s where Max comes in. He Max is an agent of last resort. When efforts to reclaim the ship through legal means have been exhausted, Max puts together a mission impossible team to steal the boat back, sneaking it out of treacherous waters, often under threat of death or imprisonment.

SEIZED!: A Sea Captain’s Adventures Battling Scoundrels and Pirates While Recovering Stolen Ships in the World’s Most Troubled Waters, takes readers behind the scenes of the multibillion-dollar shipping industry as Max recounts his unbelievable adventures retrieving illegitimately seized freighters from corrupt ports in the Caribbean to the ice-bound docks of Vladivostok and from Greece to the jungles of Guatemala. Max’s ventures pit him against a rogue’s gallery of antagonists, including Haitian rebels, modern-day Caribbean pirates, and Russian mobsters. Max plans each job with the precision of a military special ops mission, often employing less-than-orthodox techniques. He has resorted to everything from fireworks and prostitutes to distract guards, to bribes and voodoo doctors to divert attention and sail a boat out of a foreign port, without clearance, under cover of darkness.

SEIZED! is an action-packed thrill ride through the criminal underworld of shipping. In the tradition of The Perfect Storm and Into the Wild, this is narrative nonfiction at its best, a compelling exploration of a world few of us know about.