Blood Like Rain

Detective Errol Coutinho of the Hawaii County Police faces the most difficult case of his career, when his wife’s best friend is murdered. Eleanor Swieczak’s current boyfriend is a man without a past, and to Coutinho that spells suspect, But Eleanor’s own history turns up other suspects, including a revered Hawaiian musician and a legendary local drug dealer named Gustav Trondheim, who might be the key to everything.

And someone is trying to put Coutinho on the suspect list.

As Coutinho delves into the origins of the Trondheim story, what he learns reopens the most notorious cold case in the history of Hawaii County, the murders of two reporters from Los Angeles.

Coutinho’s investigation takes him to prison in Honolulu to question the worst cop in Hawaii. He travels to Montana to confront an anti-government militia, and to New Jersey for a sit-down with two of the toughest hardhats in the international construction business. And every new suspect and every piece of evidence has ties to the CEO of a Blackwater-style mercenary army.

Soon Coutinho has made more enemies than any cop needs. Someone is trying to frame him for Eleanor’s murder and also threatening his wife Lucy. In need of allies, Coutinho digs into his own past and calls on ex-prostitute Diana Andrews and her crew of elite bodyguards. He hates to do it. Andrews has survived three deadly missions to the Big Island, but the more she tries to stay away from Hawaii, the more paradise draws her back.

Who killed Eleanor and the two reporters? Who is the real Trondheim? And why does everyone in this case turn out to have a twin and a score to settle? Finding out will cost Coutinho two murderous confrontations, one on the remote island of Molokai and one in the most beautiful place on earth—the Waipi’o Valley on his own Big Island of Hawaii.

In the time of Kamehameha the Great blood fell like rain in Hawaii. Maybe those days are back.