Chinatown, Honolulu, 1954.
Homicide detective Frank Yoshikawa has seen plenty of bad deals. But when he steps in as a temporary bagman, collecting protection money from brothels and gambling joints, it turns out to be more than he bargained for and dirtier than he meant to get. In "Hell's waiting room" above a chop suey restaurant on Maunakea Street, violence explodes through a beaded curtain, and someone important ends up dead.
Frank is caught between organized crime and disorganized law—between the mob's demands, a department riddled with corruption, and federal investigators determined to bring someone down. The further he falls, the more he's forced to confront what he's willing to compromise and what it costs to walk the line when people on every side are crooked.
Char Siu is the third book in Scott Kikkawa's Hawai'i noir series featuring Nisei detective Frank "Sheik" Yoshikawa. With sharp dialogue, dry wit, and a keen eye for the political tensions of 1950s Honolulu, Kikkawa blends historical detail with crime fiction grit and delivers a hard-boiled mystery layered with moral complexity and cultural insight.
Readers of Naomi Hirahara, James Ellroy, or Raymond Chandler will feel right at home in the dim alley-ways of Kikkawa's Chinatown.
A product of Hawai'i Kai in East Honolulu, Scott Kikkawa writes noir detective stories set in postwar Hawai'i, featuring 442nd veteran Nisei Detective Sergeant Francis "Sheik" Yoshikawa. His critically acclaimed debut murder mystery, Kona Winds (Bamboo Ridge Press), was released at the end of 2019 and spent six months on the Small Press Distribution Fiction Bestsellers List. Red Dirt, his second full-length novel, was published two years later. Both were featured in HONOLULU Magazine's list of "Essential Hawai'i Books You Should Read." His third novel Char Siu came out in 2023.
Winner of an Elliot Cades Award for Literature and honored with a selection for one of the "Other Distinguished Stories of 2021" in the 2022 Best American Mystery and Suspense anthology, the New York University alumnus is currently a federal law enforcement officer and lives with his family in Honolulu. He serves as a columnist and an Associate Editor for The Hawai'i Review of Books.
