Petra Minx loves the water and loves boats. As a Marine Unit Sergeant in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, she is involved with vessels of various kinds on a daily basis. The boat she dreams of owning, as she tells her mentor Tom Gilmore in The Politician’s Daughter, is a “Lazzara 84 motor yacht … walk-around side-decks, 1,150-hp MTUs”. My preference would be for a Lazzara 76 from the mid-90s: a timeless design that to my mind outclasses the Lazzaras of the last decade with their predatory swooping windows.

In Dead Man’s Legacy, Petra climbs aboard Betty Graceby’s motor yacht Glorianaas soon as the boat docks and Captain James Freedy issues his rather rash invitation to show her around. Gloriana is a classic tri-deck Burger over 30 metres in length, but she’s only half as long and nowhere near as opulent as Titania, the megayacht used by Don León in The Politician’s Daughter to wow young women and recruit them into his service. Blue-hulled Titania carries a Donzi, a cigarette boat, two Waverunners and the master’s Lamborghini, while Betty’s yacht sports a Boston Whaler, a motor bike and folding bicycles. Nowadays megayachts often have a “follower”, a highly manoeuverable boat designed for watersports or fishing that is towed or driven separately by a crew member.

Of course, on her RCMP Sergeant’s salary, Petra Minx can’t hope to own a megayacht. But she is proud of the fact that she saved enough to buy (with a matching amount from her father) a Seaswirl Striper, featured in Dead Man’s Legacy. “The Striper, which her father had named Petrushka, was a fast, compact, hardtop cruiser. It was a good sea boat, great for fishing and easy for one person to handle.”

Next time Miss Minx is on line, though, she might want to check out the sleek motor yacht called Petra advertised on www.boatinternational.com. A cool 5.7 million euros will get you this beauty: 36.4 metres long, sleeps 10, 32 knot maximum speed, 20 knot cruising speed, fuel capacity 24,000 litres, water 4,000 litres.