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story identification - Looking for trilogy of kids' books about geniuses living on an island


I remember a trilogy of YA books I read as a kid, but I can't remember the name. Here are a few details, maybe they'll strike a chord with someone here.




  • They were written sometime in the 90s.




  • It was about a group of geniuses who all moved to an island to work on something. The protagonists were the children of the geniuses, and were even more brilliant than their parents.





  • The protagonists made a supercomputer called either Sherlock or Watson. Probably Sherlock, since it's supposed to be superbrilliant. It had an accent, I think. This supercomputer was sometimes referred to as the most powerful computer in the world.




  • Either the first or second book had a big red robot on the cover. Or maybe the cover was red and the robot wasn't.




  • I think another book had a shark on the cover. I think this cover was yellow-themed.




  • One of the adults was a traitor or villain of some sort. His (or her) identity was kept ambiguous for a while, and only revealed at the end of the third book.





  • I remember one line about how their watches were powered by the heat from their skin, not batteries. This was pretty weird at the time.




  • It ended with their supercomputer somehow becoming sentient and helping save the day.




Thanks!



Answer




The A.I. Gang by Bruce Coville :)


The first book is Operation Sherlock, followed by Robot Trouble and Forever Begin.


Amazon's description is



When five brilliant but wacky kids get dragged to a deserted island by their scientist parents, they decide to do what any self-respecting kid geniuses would do under the circumstances: beat the adults at their own game. The only problem is, before the gang can discover whether Artificial Intelligence is an impossible dream of the solution to mankind's problems, they'll have to save themselves from a horrifying death trap -- and the entire island from destruction at the hands of a mad bomber.



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