TRAPP AND WORLD WAR THREE

Having exploited the Royal Navy as a profit-making enterprise in 'Trapp's War', and instigated that homicidal clash between Arab and Chinese underworld oligarchs in 'Trapp's Peace', the Captain is back, as unrepentantly bloody-minded as ever, to embark on this, Brian Callison's third episode of his five-volume saga recounting the sea-going mayhem which inevitably follows in Edward Trapp's erratic wake.

In his replacement coffin ship, the Charon II, the choleric buccaneer commands an even more undisciplined and cowardly crew, including the very few survivors of his previous escapades - his accident-prone watch keeper, Blind Spew; the psychopathic Bosun Bligh and, above all, Trapp's irredeemably appalling shadow, Gorbals Wullie. He's even succeeded in conning the fundamentally decent, albeit by-now chronically depressed, Chief Officer Miller into joining as his unfortunate second-in-command yet again.

It begins - Trapp's starting the Third World War, that is - in the dim-lit Alley of the Tassel-makers, better known to Ottoman locals as Puskülcüler Sokak, within the Great Covered Bazaar of downtown Istanbul. Less than a hit team of somewhat questionable American mercenaries and a throat-cut later, Trapp sets course for Libya as the getaway ship on what he's assured will simply be a glorified desert bank heist ... only the outcome, as ever, doesn't quite turn out as straightforward as he over-confidently predicts and, before you can shake a rope's end, Trapp and his hapless complement have triggered A Serious International Incident.

… and that's when things really start to go pear-shaped! Being hunted down by the Libyan Army, Navy and Air Force is bad enough when you're legging it at six knots flat out aboard a clanking, wheezing hulk, but at least you know who your enemies are. Whereas even the Captain's irrepressible optimism is dented when the Charon II also finds herself on a collision course with an ominously unidentifiable 'thinking' torpedo - definitely not of Middle Eastern origin - in the Gulf of Sirte ...

Take a deep breath before you jump over the side. The world hovers on the brink of nuclear Armageddon when the rest of the warships sent by the Superpowers all turn up at the same time and in the same place and, thanks to Trapp's Machiavellian incompetence, no one is quite sure of who fired first, or who is firing at whom - or even WHY …?

TRAPP AND WORLD WAR THREE is hilarious, action-packed, sometimes brutal - and always larger than life. 

*'Another nautical pantomime, a sparkling voyage to hilarity.' * THE CITIZEN.