Action-packed travel? Yes. But analysis? Forget it.

Review of Swimming with Sharks: Tales from the South Pacific frontline, by Michael Field

Abstract

In journalism, combining investigative reporting with autobiography at a substantial level of proficiency can be extremely difficult. Along with intelligence, tenacity and a highly developed ‘nose for news’, the ability to recognise your own relative unimportance in almost every situation being reported upon is critical. Unfortunately this collection of stories inverts what should be every journalist’s priorities. What might have been an informative account of events in the South Pacific over the last few decades instead becomes a disappointing, disjointed list of the experiences of one well-travelled storyteller.