Nestled in the foothills of West Virginia, Ron Earl Phillips lives with his wife, a daughter, a German Shepherd, and one too many cats.
Albert Tucher brings us back to the Big Islands with a mystery featuring Officer Jenny Freitas in Pele’s Prerogative, the 4th book in The Big Island Mysteries. The series has been called Hawaii Five-O with modern sensibilities and style.
Officer Jenny Freitas of the Hawaii County Police survives an encounter with a hidden lava tube in Langston Otsaka’s backyard, but she finds that Langston wasn’t so lucky. The evidence says he had help falling through the thin crust of rock covering the tube, and now Jenny and her mentor Detective Errol Coutinho have a murder case. The obvious suspects are Langston’s ex-wife Cindy and his estranged son Caleb, who have both come back to Hilo after spending years in the Hawaiian diaspora in Las Vegas. Their motive is money that Langston had supposedly amassed in his criminal career, but the money complicates the case. Everybody seems to have heard about his ill-gotten fortune, even if it might not be real.
Jenny’s other problem is Officer Lance Callen, who can’t keep his mind on the job. The brass think they can solve the problem by removing the temptation instead of the problem. They send Jenny on temporary assignment to the sunny Kona side of the island. So can she help it when she is the one to find Cindy Otsaka hiding in plain sight in Kona, or when she also finds Caleb living in a tent on the beach?
But another suspect gradually appears. Someone is living in an improvised man cave in a Kona coffee warehouse. Now Jenny needs to learn who killed Cindy after the police had to let her go for lack of evidence. And how does a meth operation tie in, and will it solve Jenny’s other problem with Callen? The answers might be lurking in the lava tubes that honeycomb the island. Or, like so much in the devout Hawaiian islands, the solution might might go back to the Old Testament. Think Cain and ….
“Albert Tucher is at his best in Pele’s Prerogative, which takes readers deep into Hawaii’s underworld—both the criminal underworld and the literal underworld of lava tubes that permeate the islands—in this fast-paced story of drugs, greed, and toxic family dynamics.”
—Michael Bracken, Anthony, Edgar, and Shamus nominee
“Pour a freshly-brewed mug of Kona before joining officer Jenny Freitas as she moves up from patrol to investigate a murder swirling around a combination of guns, drugs, and lava tubes. But don’t be surprised if by the time you look up from the Hawaiian scenery you discover your coffee has gone cold.”
— Stephen D. Rogers, author of Shot to Death
“Pele’s Prerogative is a suspenseful tale that’s a must read for crime fiction fans who love tropical settings, tight knit communities, and secrets. Explore lava tubes, urban legends, and Hawaiian culture in this gritty police procedural that only Al Tucher can deliver.”
—Stacy Woodson, Derringer award winning author
“A lean but captivating detective novel.”
—Kirkus Review
Albert Tucher is the creator of sex worker Diana Andrews, who has appeared in more than one hundred stories in venues including SHOTGUN HONEY and the anthology THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2010. Her first longer case, the novella THE SAME MISTAKE TWICE, was published in 2013. In 2017 Albert Tucher launched a second series set on the Big Island of Hawaii, in which BLOOD LIKE RAIN is the most recent entry. He lives in New Jersey, and he loves NJ Turnpike jokes.
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