Surfing Detective Mystery Series

When Boston heiress Adrienne Ridgely strides into his Honolulu office, Surfing Detective Kai Cooke likes what he sees, but doubts what he hears.  Adrienne’s sister, environmental activist Sara Ridgely-Parke, plunged to her death from a mule on Moloka‘i – the first fatal incident on the soaring cliffs above Kalaupapa’s fabled leper colony.  Murder, cries Adrienne, perpetrated by Sara’s ex-husband, developer J. Gregory Parke.  Cooke flies to Moloka‘i, tracking tantalizing leads to an unlikely murder that, despite himself, he starts to believe in.  Was the mule prodded or spooked or drugged?  Did Parke do it for vengeance, or Adrienne for an inheritance, as Parke alleges?  Soon Kai uncovers a motive more noxious than either of these – entangling him in the shady dealings of big-time developers, corrupt politicians, and underworld thugs.  As he hops from island to island seeking a pivotal clue, the clock ticks down on more than the P.I.’s case or even his own life.  The future of Moloka‘i itself is at stake. 

“Delivering babies is not in my standard contract,” says Kai Cooke to his very pregnant client, Summer McDahl.  Summer has hired the Surfing Detective with an unusual request:  to prove her husband is dead.  Corky McDahl wiped out on Christmas Eve in heavy surf at Waimea Bay and vanished.  Now it’s February, Summer’s baby is soon due, and the P.I. finds himself on a twisted treasure hunt spanning three Hawaiian islands.  Did Corky pull off the most daring skip-trace ever?  The answer turns out to be more complicated than the question would suggest, involving the islands’ big-wave riding and drug trafficking scenes, not to mention the competing claims of Corky’s two “widows.”  Is Corky McDahl dead or alive?  Though the “Surfing Detective” seems the last to know, his client gains a great deal more than her money paid for. 

Welcome to the Surfing Detective Series.  Here are selections from six Surfing Detective mysteries. These include the complete sketch of Kai Cooke’s first case, “The Deadbeat Dad,” and also excerpts from Murder on Moloka‘i, Wipeout!, Kula, Murder at Volcano House, and Hanging Ten in Paris. Together these six selections give readers an overview of the series and offer enough of each book to introduce the main characters, the case, and Kai’s approaching to solving it.  Surfing Detective Sampler, in other words, provides a tasting menu of sorts—a way to try each mystery without expanding the waistline or breaking the bank.  Bon appetite!

He doesn't speak French. He's never been to Paris. Kai Cooke is an unlikely detective to investigate the hanging death there of a study abroad student from Hawai'i named Ryan Song. Except that Ryan was a surfer. With this thin connection to the case, Kai tries to piece together what happened in Paris, without ever leaving the islands. This means a challenging case. How will the Surfing Detective reconstruct a sequence of events that occurred months earlier and seven thousand miles away? Kai, as always, rises to the occasion. And, as always, things turn out to be not as they seem. As he interviews a half dozen students and their professor who accompanied Ryan to Paris, Kai discovers that while their stories tally, none sounds like the truth. To get the to truth, he must dig deeper. What went down in Paris ends up astonishing even the detective himself.

In Another Problem in Paris when study abroad student Marie Ho fails to return from her semester in Paris Kai Cooke is hired by her estranged stepfather, psychiatrist Gordon Grimes, to fly to Paris and hand her a sealed envelope. The PI tracks her through Paris neighborhoods, guided by an old flame French professor, and finds Marie living with her boyfriend and another woman. Meanwhile Kai himself is being tracked. When he delivers the envelope Marie's apparent ménage à trois is violently torn asunder.  Kai suspects the Frenchmen who have been following him. And behind them someone closer to home. 

In Murder at Makapu‘u Kai Cooke investigates the fatal sea-cliff plunge of philanthropist Beatrice Ho, whose unattended death looks suspiciously attended. Kai flies to Moloka‘i to check on the alibis of her second husband, the PI’s former client Dr. Gordon Grimes. When those alibis raise questions Grimes’ stepdaughter confronts him and they face off on the cliff from which he claims his wife jumped. Did Grimes push her?  Kai is not so sure.  Then he finds a final piece of evidence that appears to clinch the case.  Not the case he expected.