Coy is a suspended sailor with time on his hands, a mariner without a ship. While attending a maritime auction in Barcelona, he meets a beautiful woman who immediately captures his imagination. Tanger Soto, who works for the naval museum in Madrid, is obsessed with Dei Gloria, a Jesuit ship sunk by pirates in the seventeenth century, and now - she hopes - resting on the bottom of the sea off the southern coast of Spain. Tanger uses her imaginative skills with men and her expertise with documents, atlases, and nautical maps to chart the search for lost treasure. Coy is quickly drawn into the search, and before long finds himself falling in love.

As these lively characters follow the course of past sailors, their own journey becomes perilous. Are there secrets dwelling in the depths of the sea? And what of the depths of the heart? This highly intelligent and meticulously plotted novel combines the richness of atmosphere we have come to expect from Perez-Reverte with the romance and mystery of the sea found in the novels of Melville, Conrad, and O'Brian. An unforgettable adventure.

'A classic of its genre, equal to the best of Eric Ambler and Patrick O'Brian - and, beyond genre, not far below the levels and depths plumbed by Melville and Conrad themselves . . . In a virtually perfect fusion of absorbing action and precise, intricate characterisation, Perez-Reverte magically sustains the tension and suspense over a span of almost 500 pages' Kirkus Reviews