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But what is making this reader extremely happy is the surprising “small world” interjection of the author’s brother, Stephen.

Yes indeed — Stephen White is here for the untangling of century-old materials, obfuscations and character quirks and motives.

(Like many of you, I have read all of Stephen White’s 20 mysteries, and miss his Boulder stories. What a gift to hear his voice again!)

Richard White does a fine job of identifying motives, lies and void spaces. What is particularly compelling at this point in his exposition is the sheer quantity of these void spaces — missing files and other materials.

A university thrives on documents. The top echelons of any modern enterprise — well, ditto.

This book speaks to us on so many levels, if only we are ready to listen.

I don’t remember now how it landed on my “want to read” list. Perhaps because I’d read another story of how a garden shaped someone’s life, or perhaps because of all the gardening books I read and love.

I have had to pace myself so as not to gulp it down.

And I am so glad I did.

Kate Quinn has come into her own. I’m only a fifth of the way through this book, and yet I’ve already highlighted multiple passages and savored the wonderful, deeply textured voice she has bestowed upon her protagonist. Beautiful phrases, ones that hit you in the gut and stay with you.

The synopsis in advance of publication left me lukewarm, but I nominated this book to my public library for e-purchase anyway.

I have followed the unraveling of the Kealohas’ professional lives and personal reputations since the day the theft of their mailbox made front-page news. I’ve accessed court documents that are in the public record and have tried to puzzle out how and why this onetime power couple could have acted with such impunity.

I’m lucky to have found this on #luckydayreads #hspls

Some persistent basic errors that should have been caught early on. Fort DeRussy is misspelled as DeRussey; the characterization of how the Massies learned Ida’s plate number conflicts with the more common idea of overhearing mention on police radio transmissions.

I’m glad to be reading this on the heels of John Rosa’s Local Story. Both spring from care about local Hawaii people but are grounded in very different life perspectives.

He makes quite clear that his focus is more on sociology and the underpinnings of societal power than it is about a recounting of the events in court and out of it. While that makes sense for what he explores here, unfortunately there are a few basic factual error that detract from what at almost the halfway point has been an insightful and thought-provoking exploration and analysis,

John Rosa applies a sociocultural perspective to Hawaii in the territorial era as a way to provide context for the events surrounding the “Ala Moana Case” of 1931 and its horrific sequel of “The Massie Affair” in 1932. His book is the first I have read to have gone back to the childhoods of the five men who would be falsely accused and have their lives torn asunder.

I’ve now reread all the notes in sequence at the end of the book, as well as trying to read each chapter’s notes as I finished the chapter. Time well spent. Oh, and I found what seems to be the full text of the Pinkerton Report online. Woot!

… of the events leading up to the case, as well as the perspectives of central players and the military brass who tried to influence certain outcomes.

The second is this book by American Studies professor David Stannard, who came to Hawai’i in the early 1980s and likely spent years accessing and assembling the multitude of resources he has used to tell this story.

… the intestinal fortitude to source and Wade through the reams contemporaneous materials, some of it quite hard to come by, and/or distasteful. Thus far, I have come across two exceptions. The first was Cobey Black’s book — she came to Hawai’i as an adult and stayed, becoming a respected journalist. She also had good access to contemporaneous military documents, important in reviewing various facets …

Every so often, a book or a screenplay or dramatization will be issued — often with the breathless imprimatur of Hollywood — purporting to delve into the Massie case and present a clear explanation of the series of events that began in 1931, continued into 1932, and still echo in the next century.

Most of these works are spearheaded by people who have an outside point of view. And frankly who don’t have …

actions and local self-government all collided in 1931 with the very human and complicated relationships of Thomas Massie and his wife Thalia, the overweening self-importance of Thalia’s mother, Grace Fortescue, and some exceedingly disturbing prejudice among people who were comfortable bandying about such disgusting terms as “half-caste” and many more.

… the cascade of events and presumptions as possessing much of any logic at all.) Hawai’i has had uneasy times brought about by presumption of others driven by racial stereotype as well as the purely random happenstance of geographic location and importance.

The confluence of American Southern preconceptions, racial assumptions, military empire-building and a desire to have more of a voice in territorial …

The infamous Massie case was something most of us had vague knowledge of by the time we reached high school, though by then it had happened almost a half-century earlier. Those of us who focused at all on Hawai’i politics or modern history in college soon learned much more. And yet, at least for me, the more I read, the more puzzled I became. There was an abundance of fuzzy logic (if you could dignify it by …

“Hope,” she said…. “Sometimes it’s such a burden, isn’t it? And at other times it’s like the marrow of the soul.”

Deadly serious and true. But there are moments in this book that are uproarious. I think I will remember The Egg Incident for a long time. It is incredible that these men’s story was so little known.

Shazam. What was supposed to be a 5-minute peek drew me right in. #hspls and #LuckyDayCollection are keeping me well-stocked for my ow reading pleasure, and helping me choose books to buy for family.

Jumped right back in once I got my hands back on a #LibraryEBook and cleared some time to finish this. Life interrupted my original 7 days with this, and gobbled up part of this 7-day stint. So my delay is no reflection whatsoever on this story.

In the Miss Marple universe, at least some of these short stories seem to precede the events of Jane Marple’s first full-length appearance (The Body in the Library). We have a retired Sir Henry Clithering as well as both Bantrys and nephew Raymond, but a physician other than Dr. Haydock. Also, while described as elderly, Miss Marple is quite spry, and might be in her early 60s at this point.

These short stories are exemplars of two things. First, the acumen of the beloved Miss Jane Marple. And second, the ordered mind and deft skills of her creator, Dame Agatha Christie. It is much harder to write a short story than a long one, with space and word count at such a premium.

12/7/1941

“(She) gazed up at the moon, as yellow as a yolk in a cast-iron sky.”

“She felt as flinty as an arrowhead. As strong as stone.”

~ I love this. So simple and sparse … and so evocative.

Oh boy. In the immortal words of Randy Jackson, this is gonna have to be a no for me, dawg.