The Outlaw Ocean is a riveting, adrenaline-fuelled tour of a vast, lawless and rampantly criminal world that few have ever seen: the high seas. Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and elusive poachers, clandestine oil-dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways: drawing on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, Urbina introduces us to the inhabitants of this hidden world and their risk-fraught lives. A unique work of reportage.