PIPE DREAMS

THE DARK SECRET BEHIND THE MASSIE CASE, HAWAII’S MOST INFAMOUS CRIME

by John Madinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

A reimagining of an infamous Depression-era crime set in Honolulu.

Hawaii-based author and retired law enforcement officer Madinger has intensively researched the dark details of the real-life Massie Affair crime of 1931, and he manages to reanimate its events in a unique hybrid of true-crime drama and historical fiction. He begins his spirited version of the events shortly before it all began, introducing Jack Mather, a recent Stanford University graduate who arrived in Honolulu via steamship to work at the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. To Jack, the area’s raging opium war is an intriguing opportunity for a new law enforcement officer, but Honolulu still holds the same charm for him that it did when he was a child growing up there. Madinger describes scenic Hawaii fondly, but he’s also mindful of the encroaching Depression that’s already starting to cloud the region. After Jack begins his undercover work, he starts to wonder if his job busting drug peddlers might be too dangerous. A parallel plotline tackles the developing story of Thalia and Thomas Massie. Four years before, at the age of 16, Thalia got married to submariner Thomas, a Navy lieutenant based in Pearl Harbor. Over the next few years, she became restless, mean-spirited, abusive to hired help, and disillusioned with her marriage. She also now has an air of arrogance and superiority, which doesn’t appeal to many of the people she meets in the island’s social circles. By the time Thalia is 20, she’s rejecting her husband’s efforts to get them to socialize with others at all.

However, on a September night in 1931, Thomas insists that she accompany him to the Ala Wai Inn in Honolulu, which Madinger colorfully describes as a “second-rate nightclub perched on the edge of Waikiki and the fringe of respectability.” There, she sulks through the evening before she flees into the night to walk home alone. Hours later, she’s found on the roadside—battered, bloodied, and claiming that a carload of four Hawaiian men, including a prizefighting boxer named Joe Kahahawai, raped her. Madinger shows masterful skill as he alternates between Jack’s work busting opium smugglers and the developing story of Thalia’s assault, and he keep both stories moving forward at a brisk pace over the course of the novel. When the rape case finally heads into a courtroom, it eventually results in a hung jury and a mistrial, which further enlivens the story. Later, when Thalia’s mother, Grace Fortescue, and Thomas conspire to have one of the accused men murdered, it results in a frenzy of police investigations, tempestuous trial melodrama, and finally, the truth, along with justice. Madinger effectively draws on his expertise from his own law enforcement past, and he writes with the same vigor that he brought to his previous detective fiction, including the novel Death on Diamond Head (2008). As Jack’s and Thalia’s storylines dovetail, it only intensifies this suspenseful, impressive work, which successfully and cinematically reinvents a notorious criminal case.

A vibrant and riveting fictionalization of real-life crimes and trials in 1930s Hawaii.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Manuscript

Review Posted Online: July 1, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE