Broken Spirit, a Hawaiian Mystery by Charles L. Fields

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted by MizB; choose sentences at random from your current read. Identify the author and title for readers.

"Mr. Stone, I think you are serious, but you don't just dial yellow pages or Google a Kahuna. I have heard these wise elders exist, but can't answer your question. " (ch. 8)

Title: Broken Spirit by Charles L. Fields
Paperback; Outskirts Press
Publication: August 19, 2011
Genre: mystery

Publisher's description: TURMOIL IN PARADISE
"Charles Stone, Boston lawyer and sculptor, travels to Hawaii for a much needed vacation after performing two life threatening assignments for Franklin life Insurance Company. What is thought as paradise becomes a tropical hell. Stone confronts a radical movement in Hawaii trying to secede as the 50th state. He finds the cultural melting pot boiling over, threatening tourism and other island businesses and encounters violence and tragedy. 

Lovers of travel, adventure and mystery will experience romance, island hopping, a cruise on the SS Pride of America and be introduced to ancient Hawaiian lore as they follow Charles Stone through the darker passages of Aloha.The reader will meet several characters from the author's previous travel mysteries featuring Charles Stone:Sentimental Me and Canyons of the Soul,and will meet new ones."

Thanks to the author, Charles L. Fields, for a complimentary review copy of this book.

Visit the author's webpage www.outskirtspress.com/brokenspirits

Book Review: Night on Fire by Douglas Corleone

Night on Fire

Night on Fire by Douglas Corleone; April 26, 2011; Minotaur Books

Location, location, location! One of the things I liked about this new legal thriller set on Oahu among lagoons, beach resorts, houses with lanai overlooking ocean and gardens, stirring sunsets. Okay, so the plot was quite good as well, and the main character, a lawyer called Kevin Corvelli, a sympathetic and kind-hearted guy, though liable to fall in love with the wrong kind of women.

A fire on the upper floors of a beach resort kills ten people. Nine die in the fire but one was found with a fatal knife wound in the stomach and gasoline accelerant in his room where the fire was started. Kevin decides to defend a woman on honeymoon who was seen and heard fighting numerous times with her new husband, the knife wound victim. All the evidence points to Erin, the young wife, as the arsonist and mass murderer. Kevin falls for her and fights for her defense, against the advice of his law partner.

Kevin also gets caught up in the life of Josh, a four year old whom he rescued from that hotel fire and whose grandmother died in the fire.

Found this four to five star read at the library. I recommend it for those who enjoy legal mysteries and thrillers and armchair travel.

Amazon link
Goodreads link

Mysteries set in Hawaii

Left Coast Crime has a made a list of mystery books with settings in the Hawaiian islands, primarily for those attending their Say Aloha to Murder conference coming up in March in Hawaii, though anyone can look at these lists.

I noticed that pet/vet mystery author Cynthia Baxter is on the list with Right from the Gecko. Carolyn Hart's Death in Paradise , Sue Henry's The Refuge (see my June 28 review), and Jessica Speart's Restless Waters are also listed.

See Mysteries Set in Hawaii

Book Review: The Refuge by Sue Henry

Sue Henry has branched out from her Alaska mysteries featuring dog musher Jessie Arnold, and has begun a new Maxie and Stretch series, featuring a retired widow and her miniature dachshund, Stretch. The widow, Maxie McNabb, spends the winters with Stretch motoring outside of Alaska, driving around the Lower Forty-Eight in her 30-foot motor home, spending a lot of time in the southwest.

She solves mysteries in Taos and nearby locations in the first two books in the series, all while sightseeing and camping out in her motorhome.

But the third book in the series is all about Maxie, without Stretch.

In The Refuge, Maxie leaves Stretch and her motor home in Alaska to fly to the Big Island, Hawaii, to help an old acquaintance, Karen Bailey, who has been injured in an accident and left with a cast on her leg. She needs Maxie's help to help her pack up and move back to Alaska, where she is from.

There are myserious circumstances surrounding Karen and unexplained attempted break-ins to the house in Hilo, Hawaii when Maxie arrives there. There is a suspicious stranger lingering nearby the house, and later on, a search of the house that leaves packed boxes torn open and contents trashed.

Maxie meets and hires a young man to help with the packing and shipping of her friend's belongings. Intending to work faster without having to take care of Karen too, she sends Karen on ahead to Alaska and works with the young man, Jerry, to finally ship and sell Karen's belongings.

After the packing and shipping has been done, they rent a truck camper to tour the Big Island while they wait for Maxie's flight back to Alaska. But the mystery surrounding Karen follows them around the island, even as they visit tourist sights such as Hawaii's Volcanoes National Park, the park's Kulanaokuaiki Campground, the Chain of Craters road, and The Refuge, a place of cultural and historical significance, where the mystery comes to a head and Maxie and Jerry barely escape with their lives.

The book's best quality is the description of the Big Island and the places you can visit and see with a truck camper. From this point of view, the plot is really just incidental. I chose the book because of the setting, and I wasn't disappointed in the virtual tour of Hawaii, with some mystery thrown in.