New fathers investigate the death of a young family.When a sailboat carrying four bodies washes up on the Leeward Coast of O'ahu, openly gay Honolulu homicide detective Kimo Kanapa'aka, on loan to the FBI, must discover what sent this young family and their deadly cargo on a dangerous trans-Pacific voyage. Leaving behind his partner and their infant twins, Kimo must work with his police cohort Ray Donne to unravel the forces that led this family to their deaths. From Hawaii's sunny beaches to a chillly island in Japan to the Pacific Northwest, Kimo and Ray step far out of their comfort zones to confront an evil much greater than any they've investigated before.
I have been a voracious reader all my life, mostly in mystery, romance, and science fiction/fantasy, though a college degree in English did push a lot of literary works into my list of favorites.
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I began writing seriously in high school after an inspiring assignment with A Separate Peace by John Knowles. I didn't know I was gay then, but I knew I was longing for an emotional connection with a best friend. That desire shows up across my writing, from romance to mystery to adventure. I am lucky to have found my special person, and I want to inspire readers to make those connections, to one person or a found family.
It took getting an MFA in creative writing to kick-start my career. That's where I honed my technical skills and began to understand what kind of storyteller I am.
I remember reading Freddie the Detective about a very smart pig inspired by Sherlock Holmes. I’ve always believed that dogs make the best detectives. They notice what humans miss — a faint scent, a subtle shift in body language, the hidden treat in your pocket. That belief inspired my Golden Retriever Mysteries, where Rochester helps his human, Steve Levitan, nose out the truth.
My passion is telling stories where community, loyalty, and sometimes love solve problems just as much as clues do. Whether it’s a cozy mystery in Bucks County, a thriller on the streets of Miami, or a romance unfolding under the Mediterranean sun, I want readers to feel the heartbeat of the place and the people.
I write because stories helped me feel less alone growing up, and now I want to give readers that same feeling: a companion, a puzzle, and maybe a laugh.
When I’m not writing, I’m probably walking one of my own goldens, teaching writing, or daydreaming about my next story. Since then I've written dozens of books, won a couple of treasured awards, and enjoyed the support of readers.
Every place I’ve lived has made its way into my fiction: the rolling hills of Bucks County, the neon heat of Miami, the beaches of Hawaii, the cobbled streets of Europe. I love exploring how communities work — from a café where dogs guide healing, to a fraternity house in South Beach, to a police unit in Honolulu.
My goal is simple: to write stories that feel grounded in real people and real places, but with enough twists, romance, or danger to keep you turning pages late into the night.
I hope you'll visit my website, where you can sign up for my occasional newsletter, and also follow my author page on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/neil.plakcy.
Trigger Warnings: genocide, nuclear warfare, terrorism, anti-humanitarianism, anti-environmentalism, anti-common sense, heroes advocating villain's agenda, terrible research into the after effects of nuclear contamination, epic logic fail, MC replaced by an evil android clone, etc.
In case you can't tell already, there's a rant coming, people. And I don't hold back on the spoilers when I rant, so from this point on, expect spoilers aplenty.
The basic premise of this book was interesting enough going into it: a boat washes ashore in O'ahu and is found to have nuclear materials onboard that leaked and killed the family on the ship. The FBI goes on the case to find out where it was coming from and where it was going to. The execution of said premise left much to be desired. Like, A LOT.
First, the four year time jump between this book and the last one was kind of shocking, as was finding out that and that Dakota was now in college. Kimo and Mike's relationship is still going strong, however, but I didn't even get to enjoy that in this book because things happened.
Second, may I remind everyone that Kimo and Ray are still on loan to the FBI and still employed by the HPD and are still considered, for all intents and purposes, homicide detectives. They don't actually work FOR the FBI, they just liaise with them as part of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. The way it was explained in the previous book made sense: they communicate between the FBI and local police for crimes of interest that take place in Hawaii.
This boat may have washed up in Hawaii, but the crime did not take place there, and there was no homicide since the deaths were caused by exposure to radiation. They find out the boat started out from Japan and was making it's way to Seattle. The FBI does contact their liaison in Japan, but for some reason never think to contact Seattle to have someone sit at the docks on the off chance that some shifty looking character might be hanging out waiting for a ship with plutonium on it to cruise up. It's getting sloppy already. Director Salinas decides he wants eyes and ears in Japan, because for some reason he doesn't trust the liaison there to get much information because he's just a liaison. So he sends Kimo and Ray - who are just liaisons and aren't even federal employees, unlike the liaison who is already stationed there. And they have zero jurisdiction. And Kimo barely speaks Japanese and doesn't read kanji. They do find out there was a second boat, and they end up being sent to Seattle, which ends up being a good thing because apparently no one in the FBI office there thought to speak to the deckhands of the marina where the boat was supposed to sail.
Then they end up in Idaho, where one of the terrorists live, which turns out to be a good thing because Kimo's mom has been doing their genealogy and has found out they still have family living in Idaho, who just so happen to live in the same town as the terrorist they're tracking and who just so happen to know the guy and can set up a meeting for them! Isn't that a coinkydink! Now, it's one thing that Kimo has lived his entire life in O'ahu and knows everyone on the island through six degrees of separation. It's quite another when he goes somewhere he's never been before and just happens to find people he "knows" there too. That was just too ridiculous, y'all. I can buy the FBI deciding to send Kimo and Ray around on a wild goose chase for no reason - they're dispensable after all and Salinas is a bit of a control freak and they're not really in charge of anything, they're just providing grunt work for the various offices in each location. Even in my small corner of government employment, the general rule is, "If it doesn't make sense, you're doing it right," so I have no problems at all believing the FBI would waste tax payer dollars in this way even if (hopefully) that's not how they operate in the real world. (And where the frick was Homeland Security during all this?) But I can't suspend disbelief enough to think that Kimo's going to run into family who can help them out in Podunk, Idaho. Please.
Speaking of that six-degrees of separation, Kimo goes to a friend with the captain's log from the boat to help him make sense of all the nautical readings ... because apparently no one in the FBI could do this for him? He was just told that this job needs to be kept confidential and inside, and Kimo just waltzes off and shares info with a friend. Even if he was 1000% sure that his friend wouldn't share that info with anyone else, he's still disobeying orders.
But hold onto your horses. This stupid train is just getting started, because it turns out that Kimo is pro-atomic warfare.
I honestly have no idea what Plakcy was trying to accomplish here, folks, and I'm not going to attempt to theorize because I don't feel like taking crazy pills.
Backing up, early on in their investigation, they find out their terrorist is supposedly pro-animal conservation. Which is a good thing. We need to protect our wildlife and environment. So, how does a shipment of plutonium equal animal conservation, you may ask? Well, turns out, Ray and Kimo read an article claiming that wildlife was now thriving in Chernobyl thirty years after the nuclear accident that devastated the area. So maybe this guy actually has a point. You nuke a place, make it completely toxic, killing off everything or causing genetic mutations and cancers in whatever happens to survive and badda-bing badda-bang! You've got a wildlife preserve.
So first thing I had to do was see if any such article actually exists on the internet. I think this might be the one that inspired this nonsense: https://www.cnet.com/news/animals-ret...
Everyone, do yourselves a favor and do NOT read the comments. They could've easily been posted by the antagonists in this book. The article is so thin on anything resembling actual scientific research that it should be a joke to even publish it. Numbers are up, but that doesn't mean the animals are healthy, just that they've realized there are no people there and have moved into the area. There's also an article linked inside that one about some species of birds that have started to adapt to the radiation levels. And I think that's what Plakcy was trying to establish here, but it's handled really horribly. If it had only been the clearly-lunatic bad guy who thought this was a good idea, that would've been one thing. Kimo and Ray could've easily googled all the other research out there showing the extreme negative effects of the zone, not just ground zero but the various other zones around Chernobyl, on humans and wildlife to contradict the bad guy in just a matter of seconds, but they never do that. And apparently neither did the author. Seriously, it takes like five seconds to google this crap.
The first time it's brought up, Ray and Kimo talk about it with almost a gallows-type humor. Because they read that absolutely appalling article. Much later on in the book, it's noted that the bad guy wrote an article like that too, and it would've been easy enough for the author to connect those two events as being the same article, that it was written by someone with skewered views who really just wants to get rid of humanity, and thus debunk the whole concept or at least call it into question. He doesn't quite go that extra half-step though. I guess readers can infer it from the text if they want to, but it really should've been spelled out.
I was uncomfortable with that, though honestly if not for a friend of mine who is from the area speaking on this subject before in conversations not related to this book, I doubt I would've batted an eye over it. What really struck me was Kimo actually advocating nuking Afghanistan and Iraq to get rid of the terrorists, despite the very real lose of innocent life that would result from it and despite the fact that nuclear waste wouldn't just effect the areas that are bombed but would spread out from there. He even supports this by saying it ended WWII. Like he forgot in just the span of two seconds that HE'S PART JAPANESE and those where his people who got nuked. Oh, and the war was already on its way to being over when they dropped those bombs. They were dropped to prove we'd do it, not because it was necessary. It's never EVER necessary to kill civilians, but Kimo's all for it so long it saves American lives and his family.
There are thousands of better ways to include this debate in this book, how much is too much military intervention, how much is too little, is the government doing enough to counter terrorism and what can we do different. (And to be clear, the terrorists in this book are American patriots.) But instead, Plakcy puts Kimo on the side of KILL THEM ALL despite the loss of innocent life (and then ten pages later, he's "reminded" of this radical group's willingness to kill innocents when someone ends up killed by one of them) and puts Ray on the "You've got to be kidding me" side, and there's no nuance at all. In just the last book, we saw the lengths Kimo went to to prevent a home-grown radical cult from setting off a bomb in Hawaii, because innocent lives were at stake, but now he just doesn't care? Because if you live next to a terrorist, you should do something about it and if you don't, you're aiding and abetting them? WHAT?!!!!
We also never find out what exactly happens with the plutonium or the compound that was raided, since once Ray and Kimo got their bad guy and hand him over to the local FBI agents, they were back on a plane to Honolulu. They didn't even wait for a debriefing or to write up or sign any statements. We never find out what happens to anyone on the Japan side of the investigation either. Everything just gets dropped.
On the personal front, while I said above that Kimo and Mike's relationship is still solid, it's apparently not solid enough for Mike to handle Kimo being gone for two weeks. And over Valentine's Day.
It's not like Kimo has a choice in it, but Mike goes and gets himself drunk one night. But he doesn't have a drinking problem. And every time they talk, he tries to make Kimo feel guilty. Screw you, Mike. Grow up.
And I still don't understand why Kimo thinks he had anything to feel guilty about that time he and Mike broke up. I only mention it here because it comes up in passing. Mike cheated on Kimo and had unprotected sex with a stranger and lied about it, and then put Kimo's health at risk by having unprotected sex with him. What about that required Kimo to give an explanation for breaking things off?
This is definitely a low point in the series. Plakcy got a bit ambitious with this one, probably trying to write the next Jason Bourne or something, and he proved himself incapable. Hopefully, evil!Kimo never makes another appearance. He was so OOC here that it was like I was reading about another character.
So why two stars? Well, the writing - aside from the logic fail and plot holes - was still good. There were some typos but nothing too drastic. I still mostly enjoyed all the characters, until Kimo gave into temptation and ate some Dark Side cookies. But mostly the stars are for Ray, who was a highlight in this book. Usually he just tags along with Kimo and plays the straight guy to Kimo's wild card, but here he gets to put on his world-traveler boots and show off his knowledge of how to get around in unfamiliar places, while Kimo was struggling with jet lag, time zone changes and general traveler grumpiness. And even though we only got a few glimpses of Dakota, it was great to see him grown up and in college and doing to so well.["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
There is a four-years jump between this latest book of Mahu series and the previously released one, Children of Noah. So Kimo and Mike's twins are now four years old (though mostly live with their mothers, so they are not on page a lot), and their twenty-year-old foster son Dakota a sophomore at the University of Hawai’i.
The book itself focuses more on Kimo and his partner of nine years (work partner, not life partner) Ray, to investigate who is responsible of sending hazardous material via ship that killed a family of four. This investigation takes Kimo and Ray across cities and continents, from Hawai'i to Japan to Seattle to Idaho.
I liked that it focused on the investigation. I thought Kimo and Mike's relationship had been going on for a decade and was solid enough, that I didn't need a lot of romantic moments between them. ALTHOUGH, it was clear that Mike wasn't too happy with Kimo's work as an FBI, because he could stay quite a long time from home to catch the bad guys. I could understand that -- and heck, Ray's wife, Julie also felt the same. I thought it felt quite down to earth; I am sure that being FBI's spouses are not an easy feat.
I'm quite interested in where Placky will take this series, actually, if he decides to continue. Kimo and Ray seem to think about doing other jobs now, one that make them closer to their family. Mike also seems to think about doing something else. These guys are in their 40's now, with kids on their tails, so probably they will end up getting a job that doesn't feel too dangerous? I don't know, I'm very curious about their future decision. Although I do hope that Ray doesn't follow Julie and his plan to leave Hawai'i. I am going to miss him, he's been Kimo's work partner since book #4!
I deducted the rating a bit because there was a moment where I was a bit annoyed with Kimo's way of thinking about how to deal with terrorists. Not going to discuss it much but I thought it felt arrogant ...
I’ve sat on this one for a day trying to get my thoughts together. I’ll be honest and say that I read a friends review of this one before I started it, and that friend was majorly disappointed with this instalment so my expectations were not high.
I think taking it out of Honolulu changed the feel of this one and there were a few things that annoyed me.
The storyline started off well (there was one thing at the start that majorly annoyed me, I’ll come back to this later) but took a left hand turn somewhere into the unbelievable. Suspending belief made this one an OK read, but up until now I’ve not had to suspend belief in this series, Kimo has always just stumbled along making mistakes and then picking up and continuing on, so that was a disappointment.
Kimo and Ray are still homicide detectives working with the FBI, so I really didn’t understand why they were the ones that had to go to Japan and then continue onto the mainland USA, are there no others at the FBI capable? It was no longer a murder investigation but a terrorist threat, surely there were others that were more qualified to handle it. Also I can’t believe the FBI agents in Seattle didn’t question absolutely everyone at the port in relation to the plutonium coming in, this is a major problem so how did they miss a witness and the only witness with some actual information? And then you get to Kimo’s agreeing with the reasoning of the terrorists. Is he an actual police officer? How in gods name can he agree with the terrorists logic – I just can’t, I’ve got nothing for this stupidity.
Mike – Mike annoyed me at times during this one. Yes he was disappointed that Kimo was traveling, but the guy was traveling for work, suck it up, it’s not like he was galivanting around the world for pleasure leaving you at home, and yet all he did was complain every time Kimo rang and then to fall of the wagon (still not sure if this was actually an accident or not) but as an adult you need to be a bit more responsible for your own sobriety, it can’t be Kimo’s responsibility to keep you sober. You can’t lay that at Kimo’s feet, that’s not fair on any partner.
I also felt like Ray’s wanting to move back to Philadelphia came a bit out of the blue. I thought after working together for so long, that he would have talked to Kimo before he talked to the FBI boss, at least tell him he was thinking about it.
But the one thing that majorly annoyed me for this one was the way Kimo’s dad’s death was handled. I understand that this is a police procedural but Kimo’s family has appeared throughout the series, and Kimo holds his father in deep affection and respect which has been shown throughout the series. Yes we have seen his dad’s health deteriorate over the series with a lot of time spent in the last book going through his valve replacement and how the family coped with his health issues, so I thought he deserved a better send off than a throw away one line comment. If the author was that inclined to kill him off, no problems no one lives forever, but he could have done it in the last book while going through the valve replacement, at least give him that, tutu Al deserved better than he was given.
Won’t stop me reading the next one. Hopefully it returns to what it was and this was just a minor blimp
Another review here adverts to "Kimo's thinking about how to deal with terrorists" as being arrogant. My take is that his thinking is jaw dropping. Why is that even in there!? What do you do for a living again?
I was unable to suspend my disbelief, hence the 3 stars. I was reading along, and the deficit between what happens in the book and how US law enforcement agencies would actually deal with this sort of thing kept growing and growing. And the end of the book is wrapped up ridiculously quickly. The disparity between how those sorts of people actually do their jobs and the way they do in the book ends up being just too absurd.
I'll try the next Mahu book, but if the author keeps writing so carelessly, I may just wander off. (Now that's a dire threat)
This is the second investigation that Kimo and Ray carry out while assigned to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, and I wanted to keep expanding the canvas that they work on. This book required a lot of research to take them to Japan, and then to Idaho and Washington state.
It began with an image-- of a sailboat crashed on the shore of O'ahu. On board Kimo and Ray will find the bodies of a family-- a young husband and wife, and their infant twins. Astute readers will figure out quickly that I'm exploring what having kids of his own means to Kimo, making this case that much more important to him because he looks at those tiny bodies and thinks of Addie and Owen, the twins he and Mike have fathered with their lesbian friends.
By taking Kimo to Japan, I was able to add another layer to the book, as he explores his Japanese heritage. It's his first time out of the United States, too, which gives Ray a chance to shine as experienced traveler and tour guide. It was fun to write the scenes between the two of them as they travel, and added some humor to a dark subject.
Liked it, still am not sure why Kimo and Mike are together. Mike's weird pettiness over Kimo going elsewhere to do his job was so strange. (So was Kimo flying all over the world to do his job, however.)
Honestly, this is one of my favorite gay mystery series, ever. I LOVE Kimo. But the first few books were better. This one just didn't work for me for many reasons, it breaks my heart to think about and I wish I didn't feel this way.
What a lot of traveling Kimo has to do in this story! I enjoyed it even more because I live on the Kitsap peninsula and was able to "follow" Kimo and Ray while they traveled through the area. Keep up the entertaining writing!
In between my review of the fourth book in the series, I've been binge reading and skipped the reviews. But this book and some of the changes in it had me pause. At lasting enough for this review. Kimo, Plakcy's gay Hawaiian detective, has been in relationship with his fire department investigator for years. And there's a sizable time gap between the eighth book and this one. I was a bit bothered by what happened in that gap and how lightly it was dealt with.
Plakcy included the story of the birth of the twins the men fathered with their lesbian friends at the end of the previous book, and included a story line about Kimo's father receiving emergency heart valve surgery. With Ghost Ship, the twins are suddenly four years old and his father is dead. The gay teenager they'd adopted is now in college. On the one hand, leaving out all the details and jumping straight into this novel, a tale about how Kimo and his partner, working on a task force with the FBI , following the trail of missing plutonium takes them on Kimo's first ever trips outside Hawaii. The case takes center stage over and above relationships (and sex). Perhaps it's personal for me p, wanting to see how Plakcy will deal with the loss of his father, or perhaps he's got plans to circle back to it - but the relatively casual mention in passing of Al's death seems cold and abrupt. With a gay detective reacting dramatically over the previous eight books to events of much lesser consequence, and then spending a lot of the book agonizing over his future, it has that lack of attention to losing his dad show up in sharp contrast.
The case takes them from Hawaii to Japan to Idaho to an armed compound. But it's not really resolved. Was the missing plutonium recovered? We aren't told. We only know that the raid happens, he and his partner bring in one of the two wanted men and they return to Hawaii. After building up the threat of a disgruntled flex patriot with nuclear materials, we never find out how that was resolved.
This book stands out for being seriously lacking. Glossing over a major life event when the series has spent lots of time on small ones, leaving a major plot line unfinished - it's as if Plakcy was in a real hurry to move on and get to a new chapter in his character's life, and his support staff (all those people who get acknowledged and thanked) let him get away with it. If I were buying the books (versus using Kindle Unlimited), I'd probably stop here.
However, the advantage of KU is that I can go through the next five books and see if Plakcy manages to redeem himself. In my eyes, of course - clearly, everyone where he is was okay with the way this one went.
This 10th book in the Mahu series is set a few years after the end of the last. Kimo and Mike's relationship is secure, their twins live mainly with their mothers, but spend weekends with them, their adopted son Dakota is in college, and Roby the dog is still making them get up early.
Kimo is still seconded to the FBI, and when a boat washes ashore with four dead bodies on board he and his partner, Ray, are part of the investigation team. The investigation sends them first to Japan, the home port of the boat, and then back to the States, hitting Seattle and Idaho before finally returning home.
This is mostly a book about the investigation, very little about the relationship between Kimo and Mike, save for how the distance effects them.
Despite the fact that for the majority of the book we are not in Hawai'i, as always the sense of location is very strong - as in this book is the sense of family, as Kimo's ancestry is both part Japanese and part Idaho Mormon, which introduces a couple of nice new family members in Kim and her partner Daisy
I do really enjoy these books, and they show a lot of growth for Kimo between the first and tenth which is missing in a fair few MM based books where the focus is the relationship and not their jobs and/or rest of their lives
I've been enjoying the Mahu series but I had a few complaints with this one. It starts with us learning that Kimo's father has been dead for a couple of years--what? An offstage death for Tutu Al? I mean, obviously he couldn't last forever, but at least let us grieve with Kimo and his ohana. Maybe the author will write another short story and give us some closure.
Also, Kimo & Ray are tossed on a plane & sent to Japan & the mainland awfully fast, especially considering there are qualified FBI agents in both locations. These locations were interesting, especially seen through the eyes of Hawaiian native Kimo, but he & his partner just seemed out of their league, relegated to the back of the investigations, even though they did manage to apprehend one of the men they were after. The rest was seen through a long lens--and we never did find out what happened to the plutonium.
I'm still going to read the next book because everybody can have an off day. Maybe Plakcy was rushed by his editors or something, or maybe it was just a tough book for him. We'll see how Book 11 holds up.
3.5* I think I prefer Kimo and Ray as homicide detectives at HPD. I enjoyed them following the plutonium trail but it was more introspective than crime fighting. Kimo's response to international travel was amusing as well as his exploits in snowy terrain. I was expecting more from the storming of the stronghold, though I suppose Kimo and Ray were kept in the background which was more realistic than them being in the thick of things. And potential for new ground for both at the end.
I think this might be my favorite mystery of the series. Kimo and Ray are following the trail of the missing plutonium, which takes them off the island. We get to see lots of Japan! Kimo gets to experience some of his heritage. Loved it. Then the dynamic duo are off to the mainland, Washington and Idaho. I laughed when Kimo described getting drowned in a downpour of rain in Seattle. Been there, done that. I really hope our island boy and Ray stay as working partners.
This was a mess. I've been reading this Universe since the beginning, but no. 10 was the least enjoyable. Also kinda sad to realize that over the course of like nearly ten years an author doesn't evole his skills. Disappointing.
The pacing is quite fast. The camaraderie of the FBI agents is warming. The relatively graphic gay sex scene, earning its M/M element, is unnecessary and, from my perspective, a crass attempt to lure the female audience. We should be treated to scenes between the straight agent and his wife to give us a balance of the straight relationship depiction for gay readers.
This is a great series. Don't let the title persuade you not to read it. As someone that grew up in Hawaii, Neil does his research about Hawaii. I recommend this book and the whole series.
From that review: "I have been such a fan of this series and author and that continues with Ghost Ship. Over the series of nine novels, readers have watched Honolulu homicide detective Kimo Kanapa'aka be outed to his family and the HPD, come to terms with that, meet and date, lose and reunite with Mike, his now life partner. They've fathered twins with their friends a lesbian couple they're co parenting with, and have a foster son now attending college. Its been a long and tumultuous ride that eventually saw Kimo and Ray leaving the Honolulu PD for temporary assignment with the FBI. That's where we find them now on a life changing case for both Kimo, his family and Ray, his work partner and friend..."