In eight books, police detective Kimo Kanapa’aka has
investigated homicides and other crimes that take place in Honolulu’s District 1, which covers the downtown area
from Liliha Street to Punahou Street and from Round Top Drive to Ala Moana
Beach, including the Aloha Tower. His cases have taken him around the island,
from the Windward to the Leeward Coast and up through the center of the island
to the North Shore.
Now, Kimo and his
detective partner Ray Donne have accepted an assignment to the FBI’s Joint
Terrorism Task Force, where personnel from a variety of Federal and local
agencies are loaned to the Bureau to work on complex cases.
Kimo and Ray must
negotiate a new bureaucracy and a tricky case, which begins with threatening
letters sent to a U.S. Senator and his family. Things heat up as they discover
connections to other harassment of mixed-race couples and families, even
children. Since his own kids are a mix of many cultures, from Hawaiian to haole
to Japanese to Korean, Kimo feels especially motivated to solve this case.
After so many
cases in this small section of the island, though, I wanted to give Kimo the
chance to explore crimes without a downtown connection, perhaps bigger cases
than a homicide detective might encounter. At first, I thought of transferring
him to the state police – only to discover that there is no real counterpart to
Hawaii Five-O.
I was sad to
leave behind some familiar faces from the HPD, including his boss Lieutenant
Sampson, and one of my favorite supporting characters, Juanita Lum, the secretary
in the Vice department. But I couldn’t let Kimo go into this new territory
alone—his detective partner, Ray Donne, accompanies him.
Ray was a big
part of Kimo’s decision to accept the new assignment. Ray and his wife Julie
have a baby son, and Ray’s hoping to ride a desk in the Bureau’s office in
Kapolei, staying out of harm’s way. With the birth of twins fathered by Kimo
and his partner, fire investigator Mike Riccardi, Kimo feels the same way. He needs to be around to pass on the lessons
he’s learned from his own father to these two new keikis, fraternal twins Addie
and Owen.
Children of Noah has a complicated history. I actually wrote a
different book, Ghost Ship, which begins with a motor-sailboat washing ashore
on the Leeward Coast, with four dead bodies on board as well as radioactive
material. It was a big, complicated plot, and in the end I decided it was
really two books. So I split it in half, added a lot of stuff, and came up with
this book. Now I have the first half of Ghost Ship that needs rewriting, and a
whole new second half with new, stronger villains.
It’s a big task,
but I have faith that Kimo will lead me down the right path.
Children of Noah is available as an ebook from MLR right now; other vendors and the print edition coming soon.
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