Recent years have brought an annual treat, Auckland writer Graeme Lay's novels about James Cook and his epic voyages of discovery.
The first, The Secret Life of James Cook, traced Cook's life from his birth in 1728 to the end of his first great Pacific voyage in 1771, when he returned to great acclaim (even if slightly overshadowed by the showy Joseph Banks).
Last year's James Cook's New World followed his second voyage (1772-75), the one that saw him cross the Antarctic Circle for the first time and also debunk the myth of the Great Southern Continent.
James Cook's Lost World is set around the third voyage, the one that ended with his death at Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii, in February 1789.
It's the voyage that has generated the most controversy among historians and biographers.
It had mixed results.
It did return Omai, the young Ra'iatean brought to Britain in the second voyage, and it also ''discovered'' Hawaii, or the Sandwich Islands as Cook called them after a vain superior.
But Cook failed to find the Northwest Passage through the Arctic, linking the Pacific and the Atlantic (only now becoming reliably navigable thanks to global warming).
Most scholars acknowledge that by the third voyage Cook was not the man he used to be.
In accepting the commission and leaving a comfortable shore-based sinecure with the Admiralty, he deeply disappointed his wife Elizabeth, who had seen precious little of him since 1768.
He was also tired and ill.
As Lay makes very clear, he was ageing and now suffered pain from an old hand wound and from stomach pains, chronic constipation and insomnia.
Cook's officers noticed his changed attitude to Polynesians.
Previously liberal and tolerant by the standards of the day, he responded harshly to criticism of his lenience.
''To demonstrate my authority, and regain the respect of my crews, from now on any transgressions by the Indians we encounter will be punished severely,'' he writes to Elizabeth in the fictional secret journal that Lay uses to reveal his inner thoughts.
So, sick, and driven by the need to appear strong in front of his crew, Cook's temperament deteriorates as the voyage progresses.
''The apparition James Cook which I observe is usually out of control, fuming and unfit for command,'' he writes in August 1778 as they search fruitlessly in the Arctic Sea for the Northwest Passage.
''He is a monster. I wonder: could the hideous hallucination be caused by the laudanum the surgeon prescribes for me?''
It all ends terribly when Cook returns to Hawaii to refit his damaged ship.
Previously locals had welcomed ''Lono'', as some called him, but his reappearance in the season when food supplies were tight was another matter: the British had overstayed their welcome.
The theft of a ship's boat led to drastic reprisals and to that final fatal skirmish in the surf.
James Cook's Lost World is fiction but it is believable.
Lay has done his research, has a good feel for shipboard life and keeps things moving along, as we encounter storms, tensions between officers, skirmishes with Polynesians and Admiralty politics.
If you like Patrick O'Brian or Joan Druett's nautical yarns, this is one for you.
The book concludes with Elizabeth following Cook's last request by reading and then burning all his secret journals and private letters.
The journals are fictional, but we
know she burned everything, a disappointment to scholars ever since.
But as we gear up for the 2019 commemorations, Graeme Lay's trilogy offers a thoughtful interpretation of a man still regarded as one of the greatest explorers.
• Gavin McLean is a Wellington historian.
