Crooked Island

Chicago Nordejoong #2

by Victoria McKernan

Exhilarating nautical passages make up in part for lack of credibility in the latest adventure, after Point Deception , of sultry diver/detective Chicago Nordejoong, whose heritage is both Viking and Caribbean. McKernan poses an ambitious hypothesis: What if the British royal line was disrupted during Jacobean times, and the true heir to the crown was dispatched to a Caribbean exile? At Mayaguana, not far from the site of an early 18th-century shipwreck, Chicago and her adventurer/lover Alex join up with a salvage captain, two American brothers, a spunky kid and, unbeknownst to the team, a representative of the British Government and a member of a right-wing offshoot of the Scottish National Party. All are anxious to find the iron coffin of James Francis Edward, son of James II who, born in 1688, was switched with another infant and spirited away to Jamaica, where he grew up, married and produced an heir. McKernan adroitly navigates flashbacks to the stormy history of the Stuart line, where plots and alliances were abundant, but she is adrift in present day Scottish politics. Most bizarre are moments featuring the real-life character of Prince Charles, who suspects a plot to usurp his right to the throne and gets in on the action in a charmless, plodding manner. Although the plot is ingeniously conceived, too many tacks stall the narrative's momentum.

254 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1994

About the author

Victoria McKernan started traveling at the age of eighteen and spent many years working her way around the world, hitchhiking and sailing. She graduated in 1982 from George Washington University with a BA in theatre. Since learning to scuba-dive on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, she has worked as a scuba instructor, underwater model, and divemaster on several ships. She lives in Washington D.C. with a dog, two cats, and a boa constrictor.

She has written four mystery/thrillers for adults, all of which feature underwater adventure. Her most recent adult novel, THE MOSQUITO WAR (under the name of V.A. MacAlister - Tor, 2001), deals with international conspiracies to control a cure for malaria that comes from an underwater plant.

The award-winning book, SHACKLETON’S STOWAWAY (Knopf, 2005), is her first young adult novel. Knopf will publish THE DEVIL’S PAINTBOX, her next young adult novel, in Spring 2009.