A vibrant and riveting fictionalization of real-life crimes and trials in 1930s Hawaii.
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
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.
When a man accused of rape turns up dead, an Early American town seeks justice amid rumors and controversy.
Lawhon’s fifth work of historical fiction is inspired by the true story and diaries of midwife Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, a character she brings to life brilliantly here. As Martha tells her patient in an opening chapter set in 1789, “You need not fear….In all my years attending women in childbirth, I have never lost a mother.” This track record grows in numerous compelling scenes of labor and delivery, particularly one in which Martha has to clean up after the mistakes of a pompous doctor educated at Harvard, one of her nemeses in a town that roils with gossip and disrespect for women’s abilities. Supposedly, the only time a midwife can testify in court is regarding paternity when a woman gives birth out of wedlock—but Martha also takes the witness stand in the rape case against a dead man named Joshua Burgess and his living friend Col. Joseph North, whose role as judge in local court proceedings has made the victim, Rebecca Foster, reluctant to make her complaint public. Further complications are numerous: North has control over the Ballard family's lease on their property; Rebecca is carrying the child of one of her rapists; Martha’s son was seen fighting with Joshua Burgess on the day of his death. Lawhon weaves all this into a richly satisfying drama that moves suspensefully between childbed, courtroom, and the banks of the Kennebec River. The undimmed romance between 40-something Martha and her husband, Ephraim, adds a racy flair to the proceedings. Knowing how rare the quality of their relationship is sharpens the intensity of Martha’s gaze as she watches the romantic lives of her grown children unfold. As she did with Nancy Wake in Code Name Hélène (2020), Lawhon creates a stirring portrait of a real-life heroine and, as in all her books, includes an endnote with detailed background.
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780385546874
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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