2019 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards, WINNER, Fiction-Adventure-Other
As the First Annual Aloha Scavenger Hunt begins, journalist Natalie Seachrist, her life partner private investigator Keʻoni Hewitt, and mainland friends Margie and Dan O Hara are delighted to join in the fun Before departing for their Honolulu hotel, Natalie dreams of a classic film noire whodunit. Immersed in the action, she sees a man's body lying in the narrow hallway of a mid-1950s hotel, and watches as an elegant woman dressed in red searches an adjacent room. After the murder of a professor occurs outside of their hotel suite, she advises HPD Detective Lieutenant John Dias that the details eerily parallel her recent "dream." Knowing the reliability of her unusual gift, the Lieutenant asks Natalie and Keʻoni to watch for clues to either death while they delve into the scavenger hunt. With escalating visions of the woman in red and clues to a priceless hidden jade Kuan Yin figurine, Natalie begins to think the death she envisioned took place in Chinatown, and that the victim was a man believed to have disappeared long ago. Are these deaths mere coincidences, or connected to one another as well as the Kuan Yin statuette? And the woman in red? Has Natalie's visioning revealed a murderer with long hidden secrets?