I would like to thank the kind people at Lloyd’s List for granting me a trial subscription to read more about shipping, and would also like to thank Rose George for her fascinating book on the industry, Ninety Percent of Everything. While all of the characters in this book are entirely fictional, the financial crime in the narrative is modeled on Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, which collapsed in December 2008. I am indebted to two excellent books on the subject: Erin Arvedlund’s Too Good to Be True and Diana B. Henriques’s The Wizard of Lies.
With thanks to my wonderful agent, Katherine Fausset, and her colleagues at Curtis Brown in New York; my editors—Jennifer Jackson, Sophie Jonathan, and Jennifer Lambert—and their colleagues at Knopf in New York, Picador in London, and HarperCollins Canada in Toronto; Anna Weber and her colleagues at United Agents in the U.K.; Lauren Cerand and Kevin Mandel for reading early drafts of the manuscript; and Michelle Jones, my daughter’s former nanny, for taking excellent care of my daughter during the time I spent writing this book.