Customer Reviews

Shark Island (Wiki Coffin Mysteries 2)

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In 1838 Wiki Coffin enjoys his work as the linguist with the U.S. Exploring Expedition though he knows that long stretches along the Atlantic are boring and seemingly endless. Besides being the official translator to the seven vessel research project, he also does anything else his friend former Vincennes Captain George Rochester needs doing to keep the exploration running smooth. However, since Commander Wilkes demoted George to the rank of midshipman, Wiki is considering returning home.

Wilkes dispatches the Swallow headed by Lieutenant Forsythe with Wiki aboard to take a look at allegedly uninhabited Ilha Tubarao which is Portuguese for Shark Island. The crew finds the distressed sealer Annawan taking in water after hitting the reef near the island. Wilkes wonders if these sailors claiming to be out of Connecticut are pirates as there are no seals in the equatorial zone. Not long after the naval crew of the Swallow and Wiki board the damaged ship, the murdered corpse of Annawan's Captain Reed is found with the evidence clearly pointing towards Lieutenant Forsythe as the culprit. Though he detests Forsythe and knows first hand how violent and abusive the lieutenant is, Wiki believes he did not commit the homicide and sets out to prove who did.

SHARK ISLAND, the sequel to fabulous WATERY GRAVE, is an excellent historical mystery that uses as the setting of the real U.S. Exploring Expedition of 1838. The who-done-it is cleverly devised so that the audience like most of the sailors leans heavily towards Forsythe as the killer. The hero courageously investigates in spite of loathing the prime culprit. However, although the homiceide case is fun to follow, the seafaring scientific expedition makes this must reading for historical fans.

Harriet Klausner

First Line: The hours were dragging.

It could be that I love well-written books about the sea because there are so many sailors in the family. (I even married an ex-submariner.) New Zealand author Joan Druett has long been one of my favorites for maritime history. When I discovered that she'd begun writing an historical mystery series based on the travels of the United States South Seas Exploring Expedition of 1838 to 1842, I was thrilled. What a perfect movable feast of a setting for a mystery series! If you're one of the many who've never heard of this American expedition, here's a few words about it from Joan Druett herself:

"...huge tracts of the ocean had been charted, plus 800 miles of scarcely known Oregon shore and 1,500 miles of entirely unknown Antarctic coast. The Stars and Stripes had fluttered off the lagoons of well over 200 tropical islands, and more than 4,000 artifacts and 2,000 scientific specimens had been collected, an enormously rich fund that became the foundation of the collection of the new Smithsonian Institution."

As you can see from that small description alone, this is an incredibly rich fishing ground for a mystery series. The detective of the series is half-Maori, half-white Wiki Coffin. Due to his skill in linguistics, he's been hired by the expedition as an interpreter.

In this second book in the series, the ship Wiki is aboard is told to sail to Shark Island off the coast of Brazil to check into an alleged sighting of pirates. When they arrive, they discover a wrecked sealing ship and its crew. They've barely agreed to stay and begin repairs on the ship when its captain is murdered. While the sealing ship is being repaired, Wiki has little choice but to try to find the murderer of the captain... especially since the dead man was the husband of one of Wiki's old flames (who just happens to be on board, too).

I enjoy Druett's writing. She includes so much detail on life aboard ship, on ship repair, on sailing itself, and it's all added so seamlessly into the narrative that I never feel as though I'm reading a gigantic lesson with a quiz to follow at some unspecified date. There is one scene in particular that startled me so badly I almost leapt out of bed (which I thought was a very good thing since I'm so seldom surprised to that degree). The only real quibble I have with the entire book is that the culprit was a bit obvious to me, but it is a very small complaint indeed.

This series is one that I am purposely savoring; reading it very slowly to enjoy the character of Wiki, a wealth of new knowledge, and the settings. If you haven't tried any of Druett's books, I suggest that you do. Non-fiction or historical mystery, you are in for a treat.

My review of the first Wiki book provided some leeway in my interpretation of what this series was supposed to be. After reading this sequel and now into another sequel, I find that the major content is devoted to a who-done-it theme. The maritime adventure hardly exists. For the most part, the ships lay at anchor in an island bay in this story. I found that the obvious suspect is overlooked and when discovered is a let-down.

Additionally, I'm discovering what appears to be a negative bias as to the capability and character of virtually all of the U.S. naval officers. So far, with the exception of Wiki's officer friend, the rest are seemingly portrayed as prejudiced idiots.

But, hey, I'm learning a lot about native Polynesian customs and language!

What makes a mystery work for me is the detective - the knowledgeable outsider, living between two worlds, who can see things that others might miss. Whether it is Holmes, the consummate middle-class Englishman who is also a cocaine addicted eccentric, or Christie's Hercule Poirot, the meticulous expert yet always the odd little foreigner; or Tony Hillerman's Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, who as officers of the law represent the white establishment while also having to answer to their own Navajo communities - these detectives keep crossing back and forth between the world around them and their own private realms.

Joan Druett's Wiki Coffin is just such a character. His father is a New England ship's captain and his mother a Maori. In Druett's Shark Island, he serves as a translator for Wilke's US Exploratory Expedition of the late1830s. At 24, he is civilian on a navy ship, both admired for his seamanship and distrusted for being a Maori by the expedition officers. The junior officer with whom he bunks wonders if there is any truth to the rumor that Wiki comes from a tribe of cannibals. Wiki is a physically powerful and imposing figure, but most important of all, he is a keen observer of the strange and often conflicted world around him in the cramped quarters of the expedition brig Swallow.

Ms. Druett based Wiki Coffin, in part, on a historical figure of a "New Zealand chief" who sailed with the U.S. discovery fleet under Captain Wilkes. She also took her inspiration from the rugby players of her local Wellington Hurricanes. The combination of historical perspective and a straight-off-the-pitch energy, give Wiki a definite vitality on the printed page.

Ms. Druett has two challenges in Shark Island. She has to please the readers of nautical fiction and deliver a workable mystery in one seamless package. She succeeds at both. Ms. Druett is the author of eighteen books, including eleven prize winning works of maritime history. Her depth of knowledge gives her descriptions of the ships and action aboard them, both an authority and a certain economy. There is a temptation for writers in the genre, who have worked so hard to learn the necessary arcana of 18th century sailing to want to demonstrate their knowledge at length to the reader. Ms Druett is both sufficiently astute and skilled so as to keep her prose as clean and fast moving as Wiki's brig Swallow in a fine topsail breeze.

The Swallow is dispatched to Shark Island to investigate reports of piracy. Instead of pirates, they find a wrecked sloop, a foundering schooner and a band of of American sealers led by a rather disagreeable captain with a beautiful young wife. When the captain is found stabbed to death and a Navy officer disappears, the mystery begins in earnest.

Notwithstanding the exotic setting and characters, the mystery is not so different from a classic murder in an English country house. The suspects are all aboard ship. The clues are all there. All Wiki has to do is to solve the puzzle and find the killer or killers. Well, that, and avoid being eaten by a shark, managing mutinous sealers, preventing the schooner from sinking beneath them, and avoiding being killed by the murderer or murderers still at large. And then there is the beautiful widow with whom Wiki has a past history....

Joan Druett's Shark Island is a delight for lovers of both mystery and nautical fiction.

This is the second historical fiction book that follows the US Exploring Expedition during the 1800's though the fictional character of Wiki Coffin. Part New Zealander, part American, he's aboard the navy ships as linguist. And he solves a murder or two along the way.

There are rumors of pirates in the waters ahead, so the "Swallow" is sent ahead to find out the truth. What Wiki and the rest find instead is a ship that hit a reef and is slowly taking on water off the coast of an abandoned island. The crew has hardly made contact before Captain Ezekiel Reed is murdered. Captain Reed was a friend of Wiki's father, so he takes a personal interest in the case.

The problem comes when Lieutenant Forsythe becomes the leading suspect. Forsythe and Wiki don't get along at all, but he can't believe that his enemy committed this particular crime. Can he find out who really committed the crime while figuring out a way to repair the boat so they don't have to take a murderer on board?

I was quite glad to get back in Wiki's company. My love of all things nautical really made this book interesting for me. It starts right after the first book in the series ended, but enough background is given to bring new comers (or those who read the first book a while ago) up to speed. Once again, the characters are real and interesting.

Also like the first book, the pacing of the plot is a little off. We still get a little too much about ships during the time, although it wasn't the data dump it was in earlier books. Still, at times the sub-plot of repairing the ship did slow things down. Additionally, Forsythe has a vile mouth. I got tired of reading swear words every time he spoke. The rest of the characters aren't nearly that foul.

Still, I did enjoy this book. I will definitely be back for another adventure with Wiki and company.