Death in Hilo

December 18, 2023
Redman’s sturdy second mystery featuring Maj. Kawika Wong (after Bones of Hilo) finds the Honolulu detective juggling grisly cases past and present. When a serial killer nicknamed the Kapi‘olani Park Slasher kills five locals seemingly at random and dumps their bodies in Kapi‘olani Park, Wong shirks his traditional supervisor role to investigate. The discovery of a sixth body in Kapi‘olani with its head and hands missing—distinguishing it from the earlier corpses—leads Wong to consider the possibility of a copycat killer. Complicating matters even further is renewed public scrutiny of a high-profile case Wong solved 12 years earlier. Wong’s efforts led career criminal Michael Cushing to confess to hiring a hit man to kill three people, including shady real estate developer Ralph Fortunato. On the eve of Cushing’s release from prison, however, he recants part of his confession, claiming someone else murdered Fortunato. Meanwhile, pressure mounts to catch the Slasher and the potential imitator. Redman juggles the plotlines nimbly, creating palpable stakes for Wong while keeping readers guessing about the truth behind each slaying. Fans of Naomi Hirahara’s Leilani Santiago Hawai‘i Mysteries should give this a spin. Agent: Anne DePue, Anne DePue Literary.

January 15, 2024
Conscientious cops juggle a double handful of brutal cases in paradise. Redman's meticulous, panoramic crime story introduces several intriguing plot threads even before getting to the main event. Eager Honolulu Star-Advertiser novice reporter Zo� Akona visits inmate Michael Cushing days before his scheduled release from a Washington prison after he's served a long sentence for the Fortunato murder (from Bones of Hilo, 2021), which Cushing calls "the most famous homicide in Hawai'i." He brashly asserts his innocence, unspooling a complicated plot that Zo� is later pressed to investigate by the paper's senior crime reporter, Bernard Scully. Meanwhile, a corpse without hands or a head found in Honolulu's Kapi'olani Park becomes the first case for recent police academy graduate Yvonne Ivanovna under the direction of chief homicide detective Kawika Wong. Many presume this is another victim of the Slasher, a serial killer who's still at large, but the two detectives assigned to that case, both named Jerry, are dubious. When the director of Hawaiian relations for the controversial Thirty Meter Telescope Project on Mauna Kea goes missing, a trio of detectives undertakes the investigation, which has political implications. The activist group Warriors for Mauna Kea virulently opposes the project. Redman, who writes with quiet authority, places Kawika at the novel's center, returning to him regularly as the lens through which the different cases are viewed. The novel proceeds in a measured, detail-oriented way, beginning with multiple maps and "A Note on Hawaiian Language." Almost every chapter introduces a new character until a densely textured world of lawbreakers and law enforcers emerges. A procedural deep dive, long on facts and forensics, short on flash.

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