India, April 3 -- It started, with pirates.

"I have always been really interested in people. What makes people tick? How do people organise? What scuppers people's dreams and how do they get back at the society?" says Anja Shortland, 53.

The professor of political economy at King's College, London, was born in Germany, studied engineering and economics at Oxford University, earned a PhD in international relations from London School of Economics, and built a career studying the economics and mechanics of crime networks: syndicates that take people hostage, steal fine art, hack into systems with ransomware.

At 46, she wrote her first book Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business (2019); next came Lost Art: The Art Loss Register Casebook (2021)...