Hello Kitty gave me the finger before dawn, pretty much setting the tone of the day.

I was facing a marathon of meetings with my new boss at his beachfront estate at the bottom of Diamond Head, so I squeezed in a jog. As I quickened my pace crossing the empty street, a rush of air at my back alerted me to the near miss with a speeding vehicle.

I turned in time to glimpse the Sanrio character in sticker form — middle finger raised — on the rear window of a white Toyota before it disappeared down Ala Moana Boulevard. I’d seen that car before, hadn’t I?

The rest of my day, while far less exciting, proved totally unproductive.

A casualty in the slow and tortured death of newspapers, I’d discovered freelance gigs wouldn’t cover California rent. Out of desperation, I’d taken a job to ghostwrite a biography of rich, influential developer Parker Hamilton whose family had paved over much of O‘ahu.

I hadn’t been home in years, but I soon found myself back on the Islands with my parents, friends — and my ex, Koa Yamada, a Honolulu homicide detective who happened to be investigating the mysterious death of Charles Hamilton II.

The eighty-something Hamilton patriarch supposedly drowned in his own pool my first day on the job. But there were cockroaches on the seemingly picture-perfect estate even before — and not just the six-legged kind, ya?

Today was no different. Parker flitted from one “important business meeting” to another, leaving me to cool my heels on the lanai instead of working on his book. He stopped schmoozing local bigwigs only to gripe at his son, Stephen, for not living up to the family’s political ambitions, and flirt with the maid moments before his wife Elizabeth appeared.

“Why’d you take this job anyways, Maya?” my best friend Lani asked over drinks and furikake fries at a Kaimukī brewery.

Later that night, I found myself wondering the same thing from my perch overlooking Waikīkī. It was past nine by the time I got back to my “condotel” — a five-hundred-square-foot, glorified hotel room with a kitchenette and balcony — but I was too restless to sleep. The band at one of the nearby resorts was playing a Hawaiian lullaby, so I took my laptop outside to write where I could hear the faint sound of crashing waves in between sets.

It began with an email from Deidre, an L.A. magazine editor, with more ideas for a first-person, dating apps piece on how to get men to swipe right. Moments later, my phone chimed with a text.

Mom: Ask Koa to join us for dinner at the house on Friday. Don’t forget!

No way that was happening. I tapped out a made-up excuse for his absence and turned back to my blank computer screen.

I was writing a lede, when my phone buzzed again with a stream of apartment listings in Kaimukī followed by an emoji filled text from Lani. I wasn’t sure if she was laughing, crying, sweating or all three.

I stared at the flashing cursor and thought longingly of my dank, basement apartment in California. At least there it was quiet.

I turned down the volume, ignoring my phone when it began to vibrate. The screen lit up alerting me to a new voicemail.

“We need you to look at some mugs to ID the suspect,” Koa said. “Come by the station. First thing, ya?”

It was midnight, and all I had to show for the last 24 hours was a half-baked lede. I shut my laptop. Time to call it a day.

The Ghost of Waikiki
Genre: Traditional Mystery
Release: November 2024
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Purchase Link

In this atmospheric debut mystery, an out-of-work journalist and the homicide detective who broke her heart must cipher out a murder before the clock runs out, perfect for fans of Naomi Hirahara and Jane Pek.

After the newspaper she works for folds and the freelance assignments no longer pay the bills, Maya Wong reluctantly returns to her native Hawaiʻi to ghostwrite controversial land developer Parker Hamilton’s biography. But when the Hamilton patriarch is found dead under suspicious circumstances, Maya is unwittingly drawn into the investigation.

Maya’s family and friends aren’t happy about her work for Hamilton. And now, with her ex, Detective Koa Yamada, on the case, she’s forced to contend with the very person she was determined to avoid.

All too soon, Maya is dodging assailants and digging for clues while juggling girls’ nights out with her old BFFs and weekly family dinners. Convinced the police are after the wrong man, Maya is determined to stop the killer before it’s too late.

Exploring timely issues in Hawaiʻi, including locals getting priced out of paradise, Ghosts of Waikīkī is an engrossing mystery in the vein of The Verifiers.

Meet the author
Jennifer K. Morita, a former newspaper reporter, writes for University Communications at Sacramento State. She was a runner up for the 2022 Sisters in Crime Eleanor Taylor Bland Award and is a member of Crime Writers of Color, Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers. Jennifer lives with her husband and two daughters, and when she isn’t plotting murder mysteries or pushing Girl Scout cookies, she enjoys reading, experimenting with recipes, Zumba and Hot Hula.

You can find out more about Jennifer at jenniferkmorita.com.