KOKUA: The Spirit of Kindness #AlohaFriday




Double Orange Hibiscus

Any time you ride TheBus in Honolulu, you'll hear the announcement: "Please kokua, continue to move to the rear of the bus so others can board." We don't have a Hotline in Hawaii, it's a Kokua line for help, assistance, and support. Kokua is a Hawaiian word meaning the spirit of kindness, a desire to help others without expectation of anything in return.

When I worked as a Security Dispatcher for the state's largest shopping mall, much of my day was spent taking phone calls from people requesting help. If a store lost their electricity, I would ask Maintenance to help restore their power. When someone's child disappeared - always into a toy store! - I dispatched a Security Officer to kokua, help find the child.  Shoplifter? Request HPD (no, the Honolulu Police Department isn't officially called Hawaii 5-0).

While I enjoyed that particular job for 12 years, I also spent my spare time writing, with a goal of one day publishing novels. Now I have much more time to write, and have less opportunity to help others. But I'll always remember the satisfaction of offering kokua whenever possible, and the urge to help others will always remain with me.

WITH FIERY VENGEANCE Kindle Countdown $0.99 Today

The third novel in my Pepper Bibeau mystery series, WITH FIERY VENGEANCE Anger Burns Deep, was published on December 7th, the date that would become Pearl Harbor Day. It seemed fitting that my protagonist, born in a Honolulu hospital in 1941, have that birth date. 

WITH FIERY VENGEANCE has Pepper up to her Hawaiian lei in trouble, not only on the Big Island, but in Honolulu’s Chinatown. My research for the novel was done over a period of years, beginning in 2003 while lodging at a spa in North Kohala on the Big Island. When the spa and surrounding property went up for sale some years later, the owners actually contacted me as a potential buyer. (Oh, if only!) 

It is difficult to say which of the Pepper Bibeau novels I enjoyed researching the most. The first two are set in Chicago and Green Bay, respectively, so it is safe to say my research for number three was the warmest, especially considering the Central States’ snow forecast for this month. 

If you live in a snow state, consider burrowing into WITH FIERY VENGEANCE, a mystery set in Hawaii not far from Kilauea’s fiery volcanic activity. Fix yourself a Mai Tai (decorated with one of those paper umbrellas - just keep it away from the molten lava), turn up the dial on the thermostat, and stay toasty-warm with Pepper as she tries to remain one step ahead of danger in paradise.

 

Kindle countdown April 18 to 25, 2015 at Amazon.com
$0.99 - $1.99 - $2.99

WITH FIERY VENGEANCE Anger Burns Deep

WITH FIERY VENGEANCE e-Book

 

 

 

 

RED DIRT WHITE BONES by GREG FIELD: Book Review

In the twenty plus years I've lived in Honolulu, Hawai'i, I have visited many areas of O’ahu. But this author’s familiarity with many “nooks and crannies” still unknown to me heightened the enjoyment of reading author Greg Field's RED DIRT WHITE BONES.

Police Procedural set in Hawai'i
Red Dirt White Bones by Greg Field

The mystery of a cold-case murder, brought home to roost in present day Hawai'i, added a double dose of interest. This Police Procedural takes the reader around the island and to vividly-described inner island residential areas, always with specific purpose and plenty of conflict. The reason this book is such a quick read is because exciting action tends to heighten the reader’s awareness and makes the scenes fly by. 

Protagonist, Detective Kai, battles demons in his personal life and in his career with the Honolulu Police Department. When a teenaged girl pleads with him to learn who killed her “perfect” older sister, he faces a new set of dilemmas that could cost him his job, earn him a prison sentence, or get him killed. If the bad guys aren’t the death of him, maybe the fourteen-year-old younger sister will be. He’s not sure which is the worse option. Lots of high-octane action, several whiplash plotline twists, and a climax well worth the journey. Even the short denouement is unpredictable.


Greg Field's Red Dirt White Bones (The Replacement Girl Mysteries Book 1) [Kindle Edition] is available at Amazon.com

Greg Field’s Red Dirt White Bones

 

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S is for SEARCH Behind the BLUE Line AtoZChallenge

The theme of my 2014 A-to-Z Blog Challenge is BLUES, PUPUS, and REVIEWS.

Tuesday & Friday - BLUES: Art, Movies, Music, & Police 

In Search of Truth and Honor by Joanne Takasato (a look behind “the blue line”)

In the early 1980s, a young Japanese woman by the name of Joanne Takasato became Honolulu’s first undercover (UC) female police officer. As a UC, she bought the recreational drugs of choice for the time, cocaine, marijuana, and Quaaludes, from dealers in Chinatown and around the Island. She spent solitaire nights in bars pretending to be someone she wasn’t, and she frequented street corners with no badge, no gun, and no identification. Through shear will and belief in Truth and Honor, Officer Takasato paved the way for women in what had always been an all-male field of undercover police work. 

Over a period of years, Takasato severed family ties, created a false identity, and developed friendships only to betray them with arrests and prosecution. It sounds like a remake of a Donnie Brasco movie. But Takasato lived this life and kept a journal, refused to make the movie but wrote the book instead. 

IN SEARCH OF TRUTH AND HONOR by Joanne Takasato is not a light beach read for a sunny Honolulu afternoon in Waikiki. I could only read the chapters in short spurts, taking breaks to let my nerves settle. It is impossible for me to imagine actually living through those years. 

 

 

http://www.amazon.com/Search-Truth-Honor-Reflections-undercover/dp/1439258848/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1398104889&sr=1-1&keywords=In+Search+of+Truth+and+honor

P is for POLICE: Walking the BLUE Line

The theme of my 2014 A-to-Z Blog Challenge is BLUES, PUPUS, and REVIEWS.

Tuesday & Friday - BLUES: Art, Movies, Music, & Police 

1920, Shots Fired, Officer Down is the title of a book. It is also a radio transmission made in 1994 by that book’s author. At the time, he was a motorcycle police officer with the Honolulu Police Department. The officer had made a stop for a possible expired license plate. The driver was cooperative but admitted he didn’t have his driver’s license with him. 

One thing led to another. 

 

 

I’ve worked on the police end and the dispatch side of a traffic stop. No stop is handled as routine any more than a domestic call is ever classified as routine. Sometimes people contest a stop and take the case to court. That’s how the court system works. 

In the case of the traffic stop in 1994, as revealed by the author in the first line of the book synopsis, the driver started firing his AK-47 semi-automatic rifle. That led to the officer’s “Shots Fired” transmission to Dispatch. The entire story of events leading up to the traffic stop, the drama that played out, and the aftermath are spellbinding reading.

But what ultimately captured my attention and brought home the reality of the situation was one particular fact. The police officer did nothing other than what he was trained to do in the line of duty. Because he followed procedure, the stop should have ended with a traffic ticket,  proof that any time an officer walks the blue line, it can lead to a radio transmission of “Shots Fired.” 

You can read more about the book and its author at Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/1920-Shots-Fired-Officer-Down-ebook/dp/B00B2FA6DS/ref=sr_1_10?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1397776107&sr=1-10&keywords=Shots+Fired

 

 

Chan - Chang in Honolulu

Charlie Chan is a fictional character based on an actual Honolulu Police Department detective. Chang Apana, known by this localized version of his Chinese name Chang Ah Ping, was born on the Island of O’ahu in 1871. He spoke fluent Hawaiian but never learned to read. As a paniolo, Hawaiian cowboy, he regularly carried a bullwhip. Later he joined the police force as its only Chinese member.

Detective Chang patrolled areas of Chinatown, working on opium-smuggling and gambling cases. He also helped find people with leprosy who were then transported to the colony on Molokai. One story has the detective rounding up forty gamblers and marching them to the police station, with only his bullwhip for backup.

The author of the Charlie Chan detective novels, Earl Derr Biggers, changed the racial stereotype of Chinese characters to less resemble villains like Fu Manchu. His first novel, The House Without A Key, is set in Honolulu. The restaurant of the same name, in the Halekulani Hotel on Waikiki Beach, faces the Pacific Ocean with a beautiful view of the volcanic landmark, Diamond Head.

Don’t you find it interesting that Mr. Biggers based his rotund, mild-mannered sleuth on the bullwhip-wielding, sinewy HPD detective?