Kiki Hepburn is enjoying her first Hawaiian Halloween in the Aloha Lagoon mystery series. Kiki is a newcomer because she grew up in the eastern US, where her parents’ business gained her the nickname of a real-estate princess. She got tired of being organised into a life she didn’t enjoy, and moved to help run a dive shop and tours on Kauai.
HALLO-WAIIAN MURDER MYSTERY by Rosalie Spielman features a friendly cast of neighbours and mixed-age groups. Kiki lives with her Auntie Akamai who invites her to the weekly mahjong session with other ladies of a certain age. The food delivery lad, Noah, is a friend and relative of one of the players. When Celine Suzuki feels weak and passes out, people assume it’s an allergic reaction to something she ate or drank, and call an ambulance. Kiki applies CPR but it doesn’t help, and later Celine is pronounced dead. Everyone is shocked, the more so when the police suspect foul play.
Some of the players are Oliana Harris, nicknamed the Pineapple Princess from her family’s plantation wealth; sharp but nosey neighbour Stella Keawe; and the New Orleans lady Margaux La Roux. The ladies all have lovely gardens and compete for the finest plants. Celine refused to share some cuttings, but is that worth killing for? Kiki wonders if Celine wasn’t the intended victim if nobody had a motive to kill her.
The setting is busy, lively, and enjoyable. Dex, Kiki’s boyfriend and co-worker, is learning responsibility and seems to be a really nice young man, though her parents seemingly don’t approve of her hanging out with beach bums. The search for clues takes the pair to an animal shelter where they discover beautiful pets in need of homes, even a Great Dane. "Put it back, Dex," thinks Kiki, but she’s already getting to love a cat although her aunt has a sharply witty parrot, Paulie, who voices strong objections such as "monster!" We’ll have to see where that ends in the next book. The strangest mix of all is a tourist wedding with a zombie theme; everyone is invited as the bride and groom don’t have many relatives who could travel. Well, it would make for unusual photos. Kiki and Dex use the gathering as an opportunity to ask questions.
At the end of the book, I found two chapters of a book in the Welcome Home Mystery series, which seem to contain a lot of the writer Rosalie Spielman, a military veteran and mechanic. HALLO-WAIIAN MURDER MYSTERY was a fun read, and I think I’d dive into Welcome Home To Murder next.
From author Rosalie Spielman comes a Halloween homicide in paradise...
It's Kiki Hepburn's first Halloween in Aloha Lagoon, and she doesn't know exactly what to expect. Between working at the busy Aloha Lagoon Dive Shop and living with the eccentric Auntie Akamai, life is always unpredictable. But one thing Kiki definitely didn't expect to find is the dead body of Auntie Akamai's life-long friend, Celine Suzuki! And when the island's Homicide Detective Ray shows up, Kiki knows the death is not an accident—it's murder.
Now Auntie Akamai's friends are all suspects in the death. Was it Oliana Harris, the Pineapple Princess, and heiress to a pineapple fortune? Margaux La Roux, a transplant from New Orleans? Or Stella Keawe, Akamai's gossipy goose of a neighbor? They're all acting suspiciously. And each is hiding something. But is what they're hiding worth killing over?
To complicate matters even more, Kiki's parents want her to bring her hot diver boyfriend Dex home for the holidays, and Kiki's not sure how she feels about the whole situation—let alone how Dex feels. Instead of enjoying her first Hawaiian Autumn under the waves, Kiki's investigation takes her to gardens of flowering poisonous plants, an over-the-top animal shelter, a prickly pineapple plantation, and a zombie theme "Hallo-wedding." With time running out and "something" stalking her every move, will Kiki live to see her Halloween treats? Or will this year end in a "trick" Kiki won't come back from?
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