Hokuloa Road

February 1, 2022

In The Paper Caper, Carlisle's latest "Bibliophile Mystery," murder transpires at the first annual Mark Twain Festival, held by Brooklyn Wainwright at her bookstore and underwritten by media magnate Joseph Cabot. In Castillo's The Hidden One, Amish elders turn to Painters Mill chief of police Kate Burkholder when the remains of a long-vanished bishop are discovered, bearing evidence of foul play (150,000-copy first printing). Private informer Flavia Albia's next Desperate Undertaking is finding a serial killer (or killers) committing brutal murder and staging the corpses around Davis's first-century CE Rome (30,000-copy first printing). In Hokuloa Road, cross genre-writing, Shirley Jackson Award-winning Hand makes Grady Kendall caretaker of a luxury property in Hawaii (as far as possible from his native Maine), then has him hunting for a young woman from his flight who has since vanished (30,000-copy first printing). In McCall Smith's The Sweet Remnants of Summer, Isabel Dalhousie is serving on an advisory committee for the Scottish National Portrait Gallery when she is caught up in the squabbles of a prominent family where Nationalist vs. Socialist ideologies prevail. In Peril at the Exposition, a follow-up to March's Edgar finalist debut, Murder in Old Bombay, newlyweds Capt. Jim Agnihotri and Diana Framji have left British-ruled Bombay (now Mumbai) for 1890s Boston when Jim is sent to investigate a murder in Chicago (50,000-copy first printing). In Munier's The Wedding Plot, Mercy's grandmother Patience is set to marry her longtime beloved at the five-star Lady's Slipper Inn when family enmities bubble to the surface, the inn's spa director vanishes, and a stranger turns up dead (30,000-copy first printing). In An Honest Living--a debut from Murphy, editor in chief of CrimeReads, Literary Hub's crime fiction vertical--an attorney picking up odd jobs after walking out on his stranglehold law firm agrees to help reclusive literati Anna Reddick find her possibly thieving bookseller husband, and all's well until the real Anna Reddick walks in. In Rosenfelt's Holy Chow, an older woman who adopts sweet senior chow mix Tessie from Andy Carpenter's Tara Foundation makes Andy promise that if she dies he will take care of Tessie provided that her son cannot--which he certainly can't when he is arrested days later on suspicion of his mother's murder (60,000-copy first printing).

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May 2, 2022
Grady Kendall, the protagonist of this atmospheric if flawed thriller from Hand (Curious Toys), escapes his depressing life in Maine to become the caretaker for billionaire Wes Minton’s mansion on the beautiful but perilous Hawaiian volcanic peninsula of Hokuloa, complete with a tank of poisonous sea urchins, an aviary of near-extinct birds, and a creepy doglike specter. Meanwhile, Minton spends most of his time at remote Hokuloa Point, where his plan to build a resort has been blocked by environmental activists. Grady discovers via the locals that homeless people often disappear and the police don’t much care. But when Jessica Kiyoko, a visitor to the area whom Grady met on the flight over, looks to be among the missing, Grady feels compelled to unearth his employer’s secrets. The core story moves smoothly between Grady’s fears and the social moments that advance the plot, though Grady’s past trauma comes up several times without payoff, and the emotional aspects of the relationship between Grady and Jessica’s best friend stay unsatisfyingly off-screen. Hand neatly balances tense action with rich environmental ambience, and the supernatural with the darkly human. She remains a writer to watch. Agent: Nell Pierce, Sterling Lord Literistic.

Starred review from May 15, 2022
After COVID grinds his carpentry work in Maine to a halt, Grady Kendall takes a long shot and applies for a job as caretaker in Hawaii at an isolated island estate on Hokuloa Road owned by eccentric millionaire Wesley Minton. Grady's fantasies of a Hawaiian paradise take a dark turn, however, when he's warned upon arrival that the island tends to punish its inhabitants, and a glaring memorial to dozens of recently vanished people lends foreboding weight to those words. Later, on his own after Minton decamps to an outpost on sacred Hokuloa Point, Grady is confronted by evidence of the island's lore: an otherworldly, dog-like creature appears near his cottage. When Grady links the creature's warnings to the disappearance of a woman he befriended on the plane to Hawaii, he realizes he's been chosen to either find the missing or join them. Horror collides with amateur sleuthing here as the island's protective spirits seek justice for a predator's crimes against its sacred space and its adopted people. Hand, author of the iconic 12 Monkeys, is a master at genre-blending stories that feature carefully dosed supernatural malevolence. Here, she wields that mix of horror and thriller to draw together a cast of sympathetically awkward, fiercely loyal outcasts. Another strange, satisfying winner.

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