TREACHERY TIMES TWO (Koa Kāne Hawaiʻian Mystery #4)
ROBERT McCAW
Oceanview Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$3.99 ebook, available now
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: Secret military weapons, saboteurs, a volcanic eruption—and a probe of Chief Detective Koa Kane’s criminal past
On Hawaiʻi Island, a volcanic earthquake disrupts an abandoned cemetery—unearthing the body of a woman mutilated by her killer to conceal her identity.
The search for her identity leads Hilo, Hawaii’s Chief Detective Koa Kane to a mysterious defense contractor with a politically connected board of directors. Defying his chief of police, Koa pursues the killer, only to become entangled in an FBI espionage investigation of Deimos, a powerful secret military weapon. Is the FBI telling all it knows—or does it, too, have a duplicitous agenda?
At the same time, Koa—a cop who thirty years earlier killed his father’s nemesis and covered up the murder—faces exposure by the dead man’s grandson. Koa is forced to investigate his own homicide, and step by step, his cover-up unravels until another man is falsely accused.
Can Koa stand by and let an innocent man pay for his crime?
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Chickens always come home to roost, the damned things. We've spent three stories getting to know Koa, getting to see his complete willingness to follow a trail to terrible destinations, awful and condign punishments meted out to guilty people who thought they'd got aqay with it, whatever "it" was in that case.
And now the decision to find the guilty is the easiest it will ever be.
Look in the mirror.
His murder of his father's enemy, covered up for decades and the guilt used to power his investigations that prevent others from escaping justice is now a bill come due, a debt to be settled. While investigating his regular job's latest murder...a woman who wanted to disappear, not die horribly, still less have her body clumsily disposed of, but you lie down with tech scum that serve the military death machine you don't always get back up. Her mad coding skills were ultimately a defense contractor's problem as her Hawaiian-sovereignty ties were most exceptionally sus. An ever-expanding, ever-intensifying ring of ripples has his Chief of Police getting pressure from above, from the sides, and now from Koa humself: he'll finish this investigation, he'll see justice served, and he won't take any steps to hide from his decades-old crime and its consequences any longer.
This would be disastrous, because it would pave the way to potentially letting Muskolini-in-all-but-name to oil his way out of taking the blame for the dead woman's demise. This would be disastrous because Koa is not a criminal despite having committed that murder.
At no time does the tension let up. At no time do we feel sure things will be all right...which means Koa gets away with literal murder. We're suspended with the Sword of Damocles on a thread growing far too thin and way too stressed under all the weight on it.
I'll just remind y'all there's a book five and slide on outta here.
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RETRIBUTION (Koa Kāne Hawaiʻian Mystery #5)
ROBERT McCAW
Oceanview Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$3.99 ebook, available now
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: As people around him come under attack, Chief Detective Koa Kāne wonders if he might be the real target
In the back alley of a bar on Hawaiʻi's Big Island, a young man is found stabbed to death. When Hilo Chief Detective Koa Kane begins investigating the crime, the murder weapon is recovered only a few feet away from the body. Crime scene technicians find fingerprints on the knife—they are a perfect match for Koa's younger brother, Ikaika.
As the brothers scramble to prove Ikaika's innocence, another crime sends shockwaves through the Hilo police force. A sniper tries to take out Makanui, Koa's closest colleague. As Koa tries to figure out whether these crimes are linked, the sinister force continues their killing spree, threatening Koa and his loved ones at every turn.
Could Koa be the real target? If so, who is behind this trail of retribution? With his own secret criminal past, Koa confronts an all-out offensive against those closest to him and his police force to which he has devoted his life. As the bodies pile up, Koa finds himself the ultimate target of a ruthless adversary and must risk it all to survive.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: A more reflective tone animates this story, last in the series...to date. Koa's day job hands him some fairly sobering food for thought. First his reformed ex-con brother is implicated in a murder; then a close friend on the police force is targeted by a sniper. In very close succession.
It is, after recent events and a long and successful police detective career ("As was his habit at a crime scene, Koa let his eyes scan the corpse absorbing every detail, no matter how gruesome. He called it listening to the dead, trying to envision their last moments. It sometimes yielded important clues and always empowered Koa's empathy for the victims"), feeling as though more chickens might be on the way to the roost.
This is where I get off the bus, Driver McCaw. I won't let anyone have their ticket punched too soon at my hands. I very much hope y'all will get the Koa fever this #Deathtober.
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Oceanview Publishing
$2.99 ebook, available now
All five in one epub file for $2.99 is the best deal of them all.
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