Deadly Shoals
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
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.
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.
