HONOLULU NOIR

Thirteen tales that will make you think twice about booking your next trip to the Aloha State.

In his introduction, McKinney aptly notes the diversity of the characters that inhabit these stories, and indeed they present Honolulu less as an idyllic vacation destination than as a multicultural crossroads that attracts Native Hawaiians, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, vampires, night watchers, and haoles like the tourist target audience. The stories are almost equally diverse in their temporal settings, which range from “Apana’s Last Case,” Alan Brennert’s early-20th-century mystery for the real-life model of Charlie Chan, to “It Entered My Mind,” in which Tom Gammarino’s future world is both defined and menaced by Synthetic Intellects and the crimes they recount, from murder to suicide, theft, kidnapping, cheating, sex trafficking, and fake murder. Among the highlights are “Melelani’s Mana,” a headlong, dialogue-driven account of a memorable night of Texas Hold ’em by Lono Waiwai‘ole; “Hairstyles of the Jihadi,” Kiana Davenport’s disturbing report on the recruitment of children; and “Mercy,” Christy Passion’s snapshot of an overworked emergency room crew’s struggles to keep a prisoner who’s hanged himself from slipping away. Many of the stories are less interested in crime than in otherworldly threats rooted in Hawaiian culture, and the final three—“The Unknown,” Michelle Cruz Skinner’s glimpse of the world of the shamans called babaylans; “Shadows and Haoles,” B.A. Kobayashi’s encounter with kidnappers who may not be human but are still haoles; and “Mother’s Mother’s Mother,” a nightmarish tale of tissue-paper Venus flytraps coming to horrifying life by 19-year-old Morgan Miryung McKinney—are deeply weird. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Not your mother’s Honolulu, though maybe your great-grandmother’s.