Neil S. Plakcy’s new novel Mahu (August 1, 2005), the story of a handsome, young mixed-race Honolulu police detective named Kimo Kanapa’aka who tries to solve a murder and come to terms with his own homosexuality, offers readers a unique and refreshingly retro kind of gay action hero.

The book’s title comes from the Hawaiian word Mahu, which is a generally negative Hawaiian term for homosexuals. Although a trained expert at finding the truth behind other people’s actions, the closeted detective Kimo has been avoiding a close look at his own life, until one night he is suddenly forced to confront his own homosexuality while investigating the death of a man whose body is found behind a gay bar in Waikiki.

As the plot thickens in Mahu, author Plakcy also includes plenty of interesting geographical and local cultural color information about Hawaii and its several main ethnic groups, including native Hawaiian, Chinese and Japanese.  Kimo is also an avid surfer who seems to hit the waves around every other page, so fans of surfboarding will particularly enjoy this book.

Plakcy adapts a story-telling style, and resurrects a hero-type made famous by Hollywood’s golden era “film noir” who-done-it classics like Double Indemnity with Fred MacMurray; The Blue Dahlia with Alan Ladd; and Laura with Dana Andrews. In doing so, Plakcy has found a unique niche in which to present readers with a genuinely gay leading man character.

This is no small feat. Mahu is a tale told with old-fashioned, square-jawed masculine values. The book’s male law enforcement officials are the kind that haul off and punch someone who’s insulted them. Its detective partners engage in all the typical, low-key male bonding rituals, such as going to cheap diners for coffee, stopping at bars for a drink, and always being on the lookout for women (who in the archetype of this book’s style would probably be referred to as “dames” or “broads”).

In the men of Mahu, I was even reminded of Jack Webb’s “Joe Friday” character in the old 1950s TV police drama Dragnet. The book follows that kind of documentary style deadpan narration and ho-hum attention to the details of police work. There are the leads that turn into unglamorous dead-ends and the many mundane interruptions of private lives that plague policemen, and in classic style, it all leads up to the final shoot-out and capture of a criminal.

Two things help to balance out the somewhat dry and grayish “Dragnet” quality of Mahu. One is the picturesque and exotic Hawaii locale, with its mixed ethnic society of both old world and new. The other is the titillating homoeroticism that any gay reader can’t help but pick up on, as such a physically attractive, “straight-acting” hero as Kimo begins to engage in his first male-to-male sexual encounters.

Trying to make a modern, queer character credible in such a “manly” masculine environment can sometimes come off as hokey, over-worked or even a bit voyeuristically pornographic, but Plakcy manages to make it work. Somehow among all the hard-boiled, no-nonsense guys, Plakcy managed to touch on all the very modern, sensitive social issues of coming out and gay identity without making this reader wince once. 

The “bad guys” in Mahu are also of a new kind. Instead of the usual double-crossing femme-fatales of classic detective fiction, Plakcy creates a whole rainbow of sly, intriguing and dangerous gay suspects who tempt and bedevil the gay novice Kimo as he tries to solve his case. Throughout the book Plakcy also also injects plenty of old time, enigmatic “oriental” Asian characters reminiscent of stories like “The Letter” and books like the Charlie Chan novels. 

As Kimo strives to integrate his homosexuality within the atmosphere of his own police force’s macho bravado, readers can understand, and perhaps even appreciate, the creation of such real-life groups as GOAL (Gay Officers Action League).

Author Plakcy’s website states, “As Kimo and his partner search the tropical paradise for the killer through a maze of unusual characters, he struggles to find his way as an openly gay man in a macho world”. For readers, this sexy mystery “is as much about discovering oneself as it is about catching a killer”.

At nearly 300 pages, Mahu is a hefty read, with plenty of room for the many labyrinthine plots twists and mysterious, suspiciously inscrutable characters that fans of American detective stories expect from this popular literary genre. It is also a rather dense read, as it attempts (mostly successfully) to be two things at once: a classic, action-packed murder mystery, and a thoughtful, intimate gay coming-out story.

Several of the book’s plot devices are a bit of a stretch, most notably the behavior of the culprit during the book’s climactic action scene. But for the most part, the book progresses in a well-balanced way and proceeds logically to its finish. Mahu also knows to not take itself too seriously, as it maintains a kind of simple, eager energy all throughout that harkens back to this literary genre’s dime-store, detective serial comic origins.