Post-Stonewall, gay mystery fiction has mushroomed with a welter of crime novels flooding an already cluttered and competitive market. Consequently, it’s no longer good enough simply to have a gay protagonist or queer background characters as your USP, you need other hooks to pull the punters in. Enter the latest detective novel to throw its hat into the ring where a picturesque and exotic setting, namely Hawaii, gives the novel its different angle as well as its title.

‘Mahu’ is Hawaiian for gay man and is widely regarded as a derogatory bitch-slap of an insult. In traditional Hawaiian culture, gay men lived with the women, also treated as second-class citizens, and did ‘women’s work’ - whatever that is; presumably all the hard stuff the ‘real’ don’t fancy - but as with most machismoed schlong-swinging societies ‘special’ - i.e. some light up-the-bum action - friendships between men are tolerated as long as you’re a top and straight-acting.

Hence the tortured tension turmoiling in the mind of the book’s protagonist. For Detective Kimo Kanapa’aka of the Honolulu police force, the idea of being known as a mahu is terrifying, so much so he suppresses his real sexuality with a load of going-nowhere one-nighters with ‘wahine’ (women), often tourists he’s in no danger of seeing again and having to string along with lies. But finally, after a hard day’s street-pounding followed by some late-night drink destressing, Kimo decides to check out a local gay bar. Unfortunately, he inadvertently witnesses a dead body being dumped in an alley behind the bar and in the fallout is forced to out himself, throwing his life, both personally and professionally, into chaos.

And this is where the book’s strength lies, in its dual narrative that follows a murder case and Kimo’s coming out journey as well as what it means to be gay in a homo-unfriendly island culture. This could quite easily have descended in a sledgehammer-subtle polemic railing against homophobia and relaying a hackneyed age old story of a gay man opening the closet door and learning to accept his sexuality, but Plakcy avoids the cliché trap by giving both his plot and his characters nuance and depth. Kimo is tortured, yes, but he never comes across as a cookie-cutter self-hater you can get in some sections of gay fiction.

As for the murder mystery, all the expected labyrinthine plot clues and false cul-de-sacs are present and correct, but there’s more flesh for the reader to sink their teeth into. OK, some of the evidence trail is telegraphed, but by and large you don’t foresee everything that’s coming and there’s enough originality to keep the interest buoyant. Speaking of buoyant, the novel is also pretty sexy as we follow Kimo’s bedroom reawakening. Sex scenes in novels are notoriously difficult to get right, but Plakcy manages to strike the right balance of sauce and realism without the cringe factor creeping in.

Pacey, well-plotted and surprisingly moving, Mahu Surfer is as much about self-discovery as it about solving a crime.

Read our interview with Neil Plakcy.

Mahu Surfer, by Neil S Plakcy
Published by: Alyson Publications
Released: 13 September 2007
ISBN: 9781560235330

Buy Mahu Surfer online and save some money to put towards Mahu, the first book in Neil S. Plakcy's Mahu series of detective novels.