Deadly Shoals (Wiki Coffin Mysteries 4) [Hardcover]

Joan Druett (Author)

Book Description

Series: Wiki Coffin Mysteries 4 | Publication Date: December 10, 2007

      Wiki Coffin plays many parts on the U.S. Exploring Expedition---sailor, linguist, navigator, and, as half-Maori, cultural go-between. But then the brig Swallow reaches the coast of Patagonia, an area infamous for its rough gauchos and revolutionary spirit, and he must take on his other role, that of agent of U.S. law and order.

      A New England whaler shows up, desperate to find the devious trader who has cheated him of a thousand dollars and a schooner. Wiki is assigned to find the missing ship, only to follow a trail of clues to a dead body, half-buried in a hill of salt, its skull picked clean by vultures. The adventure unravels in the impoverished village of El Carmen de Patagones, where the threat of French invasion is imminent, and business is at a standstill under the orders of General de Rosas, the tyrant of Buenos Aires.

      Wiki must risk both life and reputation in pursuit of a vicious and determined killer who has set his sights on another target: the U.S. Exploring Expedition itself.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

New Zealand historian Druett's uneven fourth Wiki Coffin whodunit (after 2006's Run Afoul) finds half-Maori navigator and linguister Wiki investigating theft and murder in Patagonia. It's January 1839, and Wiki, as sheriff's representative aboard the U.S. Exploring Expedition ship Swallow, agrees to help outraged whaler Captain Stackpole, who claims to have been roundly cheated. Trader Caleb Adams took Stackpole's money and vanished, along with the schooner Stackpole was buying. When Wiki goes looking for Adams, he finds only his corpse. The bill of sale has been stolen from Adams's store and a clerk murdered as well. Gauchos, Indians, revolutionaries and adventurers flock across the beautifully rendered landscape. Druett's meticulous research shows in the vivid characters (including historical figures), but irrelevant passages of lush detail smother the plot, letting it resurface only in a late and hurried blurt of exposition. A better balance between detail and story would have made for smoother sailing. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Maritime mystery fans will welcome the return of Wiki Coffin, the half-Maori linguist traveling with the U.S. South Seas Naval Exploring Expedition of 1838. Those familiar with the series will not be surprised that, once again, Wiki is called upon to perform duties extending well beyond his official capacity as ship's translator. This time around he must act as a de facto sheriff when a New England whaler is cheated out of both $1,000 and a schooner. As the representative of U.S. law and order for the expedition, Wiki penetrates the infamous Rio Negro region of Patagonia in search of a thief and murderer. Druett continues to pepper her suspenseful plots with the same type of authentic seafaring facts and lore that so distinguished the novels of the late Patrick O'Brien. Flanagan, Margaret

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; First Edition edition (December 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312353375
• ISBN-13: 978-0312353377
• Product Dimensions: 13.8 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,959,148 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Back in the year 1984, on the picture-poster tropical island of Rarotonga, I literally fell into whaling history when I tumbled into a grave. A great tree had been felled by a recent hurricane, exposing a gravestone that had been hidden for more than one and a half centuries. It was the memorial to a young whaling wife, who had sailed with her husband on the New Bedford ship Harrison in the year 1845. And so my fascination with maritime history was triggered ... resulting in 18 books (so far). The latest -- number nineteen -- is a biography of a truly extraordinary man, Tupaia, star navigator and creator of amazing art.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "There was another grave danger lurking in the fog.", December 27, 2007

By 

K. M. "literary devotee" (California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Deadly Shoals (Wiki Coffin Mysteries 4) (Hardcover)

Wiki Coffin is a versatile crewmember of one of the ships belonging to an American scientific expedition that set sail from Norfolk, Virginia. The little fleet that had the Pacific as its goal, moved down along the eastern coast of South America first (no Panama Canal yet). DEADLY SHOALS, the fourth "seafaring mystery" in Joan Druett's Wiki Coffin series, traces the course actually sailed by the U.S. Exploring Expedition ("Ex Ex" for short), 1838-1842, commanded by Naval Lt. Charles Wilkes. However, Wilkes' real fleet sailed with six ships. Druett adds a seventh, the fictional Swallow, a brig on which Wiki (also fictional) is normally berthed.

The real six-ship expedition left Virginia with 346 men, and before it ended 28 men died and two ships were lost. There were numerous legal travails including courts martial and the death of one sailor in the Fiji islands that lead to massive reprisal against the natives. Lt. Wilkes became an increasingly overbearing, petty, arrogant tyrant, making the lives of the ships' crews a torment. Druett has chosen her source material wisely; she can mine tons more from documented history for future volumes.

In the opening chapter of DEADLY SHOALS, Swallow lies off the coast of Patagonia, "with the shoal-ridden estuary of the Rio Negro on the western horizon," temporarily detached from the rest of the expeditionary squadron. Abruptly a strange ship, New England whaler Trojan, comes alongside her and in short order Wiki, whose many talents include speaking a number of languages and being a deputized lawman, is ordered to accompany Captain Stackpole, master of said whaleship, to the mainland to find and apprehend a thief. In the course of his investigations, Wiki undertakes a journey upriver to massive salt dunes, rides poncho-clad with gauchos, and gets caught in a refugee stream panicking over a French invasion. He also discovers two dead (murdered!) men, and a lot of questions, but no filched thousand dollars and schooner. A very interconnected and deceptive plot builds from there....

DEADLY SHOALS offers, an unusual character as the "detective/hero." Talented, nimble William "Wiki" Coffin is an illegitimate half-Maori son of an American sea captain -- a father into whom Wiki runs quite a bit during this voyage. Readers pick up tidbits about Maori culture and language from New Zealander Druett.

The sections of DEADLY SHOALS set at sea outshine those on land. At times, the plot slogs along while Wiki treks about with Stackpole. Publishers Weekly said about an earlier book in this series that Druett succumbed to pedantry on occasion. The same might be said of DEADLY SHOALS. The plot, it might also be said, is so tightly and cleverly plotted that it tests believability. But by and large, the author succeeds in telling a story that winningly entertains, sustains suspense, and goads curiosity about the real expedition. I'm looking forward to the next Wiki Coffin entry.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars `I can say nothing of use to you'., June 7, 2008

By 

J. Cameron-Smith "Expect the Unexpected" (ACT, Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Deadly Shoals (Wiki Coffin Mysteries 4) (Hardcover)

Wiki Coffin is the linguist and captain's clerk on a US exploring expedition which has reached the Rio Negro. The Rio Negro, in 1839, is a remote area of Patagonia famous for rough gauchos and revolutionaries.

Wiki has another role, though, as a sheriff's deputy and it is via this role that much of the action in this novel unfolds. A whaleman in search of his stolen schooner sparks a search which leads to the discovery of murder. Solving the murder(s) (and finding the missing schooner) leads Wiki on a number of adventures involving an assortment of scoundrels. Along the way, the reader acquires all manner of important nautical information and factoids, including the role of [...] in Polynesian navigation.

This is the fourth of Ms Druett's novels to feature the inimitable Wiki Coffin. I've not yet read the other three, but I will certainly be looking out for them. Wiki himself is a thoroughly likeable character and is a superb protagonist in this particular setting. Ms Druett herself is a well-known nautical writer and historian, and a number of her books (both fiction and non-fiction) are on my reading list.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Signal from the Vin, July 12, 2008

By 

T. S. Baxter (Atlanta Ga) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Deadly Shoals (Wiki Coffin Mysteries 4) (Hardcover)

This is an excellent book in an excellent series. The idea of using a half Maori/half Yankee against the backdrop of the US South Seas Exploring Expedition is original and clever, well done indeed. Any fan of nautical fiction will like this series, the attention to details of life at sea is well researched and written