NIGHTBIRDS ON NANTUCKET

It's a whale of a lot of fun. Though more than a fraction tamer than The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, the humor is as broad as it was in Black Hearts in Battersea and the plot as thick. Dido Twait's cockney sounds right at home along with the Nantucket twang. She's eleven years old and awakens after a nine month coma aboard the good ship Sarah Casket, a whaler that rescued her from the wreck of the English boat she'd stowed away on. Nobody's ever bounced out of a prolonged sleep with more energy. Dido deals with Captain Casket's obsession (an inverted Moby Dick fever in which a pink whale ecstatically pursues him) and stokes up Dutiful Penitence Casket, his wan and fearful daughter. The two are eventually immured on Nantucket with Dutiful's hated Aunt Tribulation who turned out to be an impostor hiding in the New World while conniving to remove King James and replace him with a Hanoverian. To this end a bird watching bomb expert from Germany has been paid to invent a huge gun. Its recoil might knock Nantucket into New York harbor. Like whale blubber, the storyline is a mess to boil down, but it's got as much robust energy as one of the happier sea chanties.