Honolulu Noir (Akashic Noir)

September 2, 2024
It’s 13 cases of trouble in paradise for the characters in Akashic’s solid latest regional crime anthology (after West Jerusalem Noir), which shrewdly exposes the underbelly of Hawaii’s capital city. Subjects range from a dystopian near future overrun by AI to an unsettling riff on an Agatha Christie classic. The highlight is Alan Brennert’s “Apana’s Last Case,” set in Honolulu’s Chinatown, which features real-life police officer Chang Apana (the inspiration for Charlie Chan) investigating a 1918 missing persons’ case involving a white woman from the mainland. Tom Gammarino’s “It Entered My Mind” comes in a close second. In it, an unnamed human forensics specialist, operating in a near future where so-called “Synthetic Intellects” do most of the work matching crime scene evidence to potential suspects, tackles a killing involving a Christian minister and a former rock star with divergent views on SI technology. Another standout is Stephanie Han’s “The Swimmers,” which features a father in the midst of a bitter divorce who contemplates an act of shocking violence. Taken together, these stories successfully probe beneath the surface of a locale best known for its “white sandy beaches and crystal-blue waters.” It’s a smart balance of thrills and cultural insight.

October 1, 2024
Thirteen tales that will make you think twice about booking your next trip to the Aloha State. In his introduction, McKinney aptly notes the diversity of the characters that inhabit these stories, and indeed they present Honolulu less as an idyllic vacation destination than as a multicultural crossroads that attracts Native Hawaiians, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, vampires, night watchers, and haoles like the tourist target audience. The stories are almost equally diverse in their temporal settings, which range from "Apana's Last Case," Alan Brennert's early-20th-century mystery for the real-life model of Charlie Chan, to "It Entered My Mind," in which Tom Gammarino's future world is both defined and menaced by Synthetic Intellects and the crimes they recount, from murder to suicide, theft, kidnapping, cheating, sex trafficking, and fake murder. Among the highlights are "Melelani's Mana," a headlong, dialogue-driven account of a memorable night of Texas Hold 'em by Lono Waiwai'ole; "Hairstyles of the Jihadi," Kiana Davenport's disturbing report on the recruitment of children; and "Mercy," Christy Passion's snapshot of an overworked emergency room crew's struggles to keep a prisoner who's hanged himself from slipping away. Many of the stories are less interested in crime than in otherworldly threats rooted in Hawaiian culture, and the final three--"The Unknown," Michelle Cruz Skinner's glimpse of the world of the shamans called babaylans; "Shadows and Haoles," B.A. Kobayashi's encounter with kidnappers who may not be human but are still haoles; and "Mother's Mother's Mother," a nightmarish tale of tissue-paper Venus flytraps coming to horrifying life by 19-year-old Morgan Miryung McKinney--are deeply weird. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Not your mother's Honolulu, though maybe your great-grandmother's.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 1, 2024
Akashic's Noir series rolls merrily along, across the Pacific to this island state so often called paradise. But, okay, ""merrily" isn't the right word given that the underbelly of Hawaii's capital city is very dark indeed. The residents we meet here are a mixture of the bad, the evil, and the deeply unfortunate. The stories, by authors such as Stephanie Han, Lono Waiwai'ole, Don Wallace, Kiana Davenport, Scott Kikkawa, Mindy Eun Soo Pennybacker, and editor Chris McKinney, range from mystery to thriller to horror, with characters on the right side of the law, the wrong side, and straddling that thin line in between. The writing styles vary, but they have one thing in common: high quality. These are some seriously fine stories--outstanding writing, after all, is the hallmark of Akashic's long-running, world-circling Noir series, now weighing in at 122 titles--and readers may well find themselves spending a lot of time in this fictional Honolulu, savoring the atmosphere and flavor of each tale before moving on to the next. A splendid anthology.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.