A job in Hawaii sounded like an ideal way to combine
business with pleasure. And with an erotic interlude in
mind, Sharon McCone brought her long-term lover Hy
Ripinsky along. But from the very moment she arrives on
the island of Kauai, McCone finds herself in what the
natives call "ahi wel maka-u," the place between fire love
and fire terror, a place where even a seasoned private
investigator can get burned.
Here, on an island filled with both breathtaking natural
beauty and serious economic troubles, young filmmaker
Glenna Stanleigh suspects someone is trying to stop the
production of her local documentary. A series of accidents-
looking more and more like sabotage-have plagued the shoot
to the point where the film's backer, island bigwig Peter
Wellbright, fears the police may shut down the project. By
the time McCone steps in, nerves are frayed, crew members
are frightened, and Glenna's life is at stake.
McCone immediately senses the tensions between native and
nonnative Hawaiians-and how Glenna's movie, which focuses
on Wellbright's father, may be making things worse. Her
instincts tell her to explore both the dark corners of the
island's present problems and the Wellbright family's
murky past. Then suddenly, even as she teeters on the edge
of an affair with a Hawaiian helicopter pilot who seems
immersed in the case, a macabre death changes everything.
And amid a conflagration of desires and desperate
decisions, McCone is forced to take one irrevocable step
to stop a killer.