Mahu Review in We The People


April 2006 -- Gaysonoma.com - Voice of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgendered Community in the North Bay

Coming Out Overshadows Murder Plot

Hal Campbell

April 1, 2006

Māhū
by Neil S. Plakcy
Positronic Press

Lately, most of the books I've reviewed have been rather sad and depressing. So I thought I'd cheer you up this month with a selection that is uplifting in tone. Although it is a murder mystery, it is very different in style from what we've come to expect from this genre.

First, let's talk about the cover. It's awful. The narrator is a muscular 6-footer who is a mixture of Irish, Hawaiian, and Japanese. So who do they use as a model for the book's cover? A scruffy version of puny game show host Tom Bergeron who looks about as Amerasian as Dolly Parton looks Puerto Rican.

But ignore the cover and prepare to lose yourself in a fairly long (for a mystery) tale of a 32 year-old police detective in Honolulu who, in addition to loving police work, is a superb surfer and a very loving son and brother. He is also gay and smothering in the closet.

Surprisingly it is his struggle to "come out" that is the heart of the novel. The solving of the main murder is actually secondary. (Compare this to some of the classic mysteries where the murder plot is everything and the characters are barely thought about.) Almost as interesting are author Plakcy's observations of Hawaiian culture, especially when it comes to family relationships.

At a family gathering the narrator, Kimo Kanapa'aka, looks around at his parents, his siblings, and all his nieces and nephews and he gets reflective.

"It was saddening to know that I would never have more family than this, and that I would lose them eventually. I wouldn't have a wife, although I hoped someday I would find a partner. . .. I would never have a luau to celebrate the birth of my child, and never have grandchildren to swarm over me. . . . I would always be a part of my brothers' lives, or hoped I would, be Uncle Kimo to Jeffrey and Ashley
and their brothers and sisters, and that would have to be enough. Like my parents, I took the hand I was dealt and tried to make the best of it."

Heavy writing for a murder mystery.

But there is a murder and it does get solved--in about as gay a manner as is possible (in a cubicle in the back room of a bar). The solving of it saves the career of Kimo, whose homosexuality eventually has become common knowledge in the uptight police department. (How surprising that in a city where all races mingle with no problem, being a mahu is still considered taboo.) However, the murder resolution, like the rest of that story line, still takes a secondary position in the book's ending. It is Kimo's conclusion that takes center stage.

"I was still a cop, just as I was still a surfer, and I was still a gay man. It was up to me to make a unique individual out of all those identities."

Let's hope that Plakcy has a sequel planned. I want to see Kimo get a happy ending.