It's a novel. People enter the water, people exit the water. People change names, people change themselves. There's some WWII waterfront life bits, which were fun; and shipwreck raft survival which was realistic (but maybe not so interesting to me since I'd already read enough accounts of such?). There was some WWII criminal life bits, which were probably well-researched and well-written, but which I wasn't so interested in. Probably fans of novels would tell me I shouldn't try reading this novel as if it were non-fiction, hoping to gobble up facts. Ah well.