I’m delighted to welcome Robert McCaw with a guest post. Robert is the author of the Koa Kane Hawaiian Mystery series and his new book, Death of a Messenger, the prequel to the series, is published tomorrow. 

On Hawaii Island, an anonymous 911 caller reports a body at Pohakuloa, the Army’s live-fire training area. Hilo Chief Detective Koa Kane, a cop with his own secret criminal past, finds a mutilated corpse–bearing all the hallmarks of ancient ritual sacrifice.

He encounters a host of obstacles as he pursues the murderer–an incompetent local medical examiner, hostility from both haoles (Westerners) and sovereignty advocates, and a myriad of lies. Koa races to discover whether the victim stumbled upon a gang of high-tech archaeological thieves, or learned a secret so shocking it cost him his life and put others in mortal danger.

Will Hilo’s most respected detective stop this sadistic fiend–or will the Pohakuloa killer strike again, with even deadlier consequences?

Book links ~ Amazon UK | Amazon US | 

Where Do Characters Come From and Why?

Often when I fall in love with a book or a movie, it’s because some unique character sparks my imagination, which leads me to wonder how and why the author conceived them. Consider Michael Connolly’s Harry Bosch or Renée Ballard, Barry Eisler’s John Rain, and Delia Owens’s Kya Clark. I’d love to interview these authors and delve into the origins of these fictional favorites to learn to what degree they are imaginary or not.  Another question I often ask myself is why the author incorporated a particular character at all.  The answer is usually evident for main actors in a story but can be more subtle and elusive for secondary players.

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