The Cat's Table

"In the early 1950s in Ceylon an eleven-year-old Michael is put aboard a shop bound for England, to reunite with a mother he barely remembers. Among his fellow passengers he finds two other lone boys, a shadowy figure who may or may not be from the British Secret Service, a beautiful young woman, a shackled prisoner, and a mysterious character who seems all too familiar with the dangerous ways of women and crime. On the long voyage across the Indian Ocean, the secretive adult world is slowly revealed to the boys, they realize a drama is unfolding on the ship—and that the prisoner's crime and fate will haunt and link them forever."--back cover