Run Afoul
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
U.S. Exploring Expedition linguist Wiki Coffin sails with the famous convoy of ships toward Brazil, where he faces a whole new set of trials and tribulations, not the least being blamed for the sudden grave illness of a fellow crewman. But soon his own fate will be the least of his problems.
As the great flagship Vincennes leads the convoy under the dubious command of eccentric captain Charles Wilkes toward a dramatic entrance in the port of Rio, careless maneuvering leads one of the vessels to run afoul of a Salem trading ship.
The trader is owned and commanded by none other than the famous and larger-than-life Captain William Coffin, father to Wiki and sailor of all seven seas (plus another dozen or so he's managed to invent in his years of telling tall tales). The encounter sets in motion a series of chaotic events that reunite Coffin with his illegitimate half-Maori son and that will see two men dead, Captain Coffin on trial for murder, and Wiki working feverishly to unmask the real killers before the Expedition sails on—leaving his father at the mercy of an unforgiving Brazilian court.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Once again the lead character's charm and the authentic picture of 19th-century shipboard life make up for fussy plotting and a surfeit of adverbs in New Zealander Druett's third mystery centered on the U.S. Exploring Expedition of 1838 1842 (chronicled in Nathaniel Philbrick's Sea of Glory). When series hero Wiki Coffin, the accomplished half-Maori son of New England shipmaster William Coffin Sr., runs into his father at ports around the world, as they often do, their reunions are warm. But at Rio de Janeiro, their meeting turns grim, for Coffin Sr. is accused of murder, and Wiki, a registered sheriff's deputy in addition to his duties as translator, must find the truth. A respected naval historian, Druett includes enticing bits of Maori culture and language. Despite occasional lapses into pedantry, she makes the vanished world she depicts come alive.
