PELE’S PREROGATIVE

In Tucher’s crime novel, a young cop tackles a particularly Hawaiian murder.

Officer Jenny Freitas is a cop on Hawaii’s Big Island, where her duties include everything from investigating homicides to conducting routine wellness checks. Sometimes, a call turns out to be both, as when she goes to check on the elderly Langston Otsaka only to find him dead at the bottom of the lava tube that recently opened up on his property. The problem, in this case, is that the man seems to have been dead before he went into the hole. What reason would someone have to murder old Langston Otsaka? A rumor quickly spreads that the senior citizen had a cache of money hidden somewhere on his property, perhaps in the very lava tube where his body was found. There are also whispers that someone has been desecrating sites associated with the island’s “old kine religion”; Pele, the goddess of fire, is known to open up pyroducts when she’s displeased, but Jenny suspects a more human cause behind this foul play. Is there something to this story of hidden money, or did Langston’s killer have a more personal problem with the old man? Tucher’s prose is spare but efficient, capturing the essence of his characters through sharp dialogue and concise descriptions. Though she may seem like a stereotypical tough cop, Jenny is softened by her almost childlike desire to reach the rank of detective, as seen here when her mentor, Detective Coutinho, serves her coffee: “He placed a cup of coffee in front of her on his partner’s desk. No milk, no sugar, when she would have preferred both, but if that was how detectives took it, she would learn to like it.” The Hawaiian setting, which takes care to differentiate between the many subdivisions and regional identities of island society, is immersive. By the end, readers will be eagerly awaiting their next island sojourn with Officer Freitas.

A lean but captivating detective novel.