Take a ride on the Saddle Road

Well, Bradley, that took you long enough.

I'm pleased to announce the seventh novel in my Noelani Lee mystery series, THE SADDLE ROAD SAMBA, is coming to an on-line bookseller near you next Monday, June 27.*

What, you may ask, is THE SADDLE ROAD SAMBA? Well, here's a clue:

To their classmates in the Waiākea High School class of 1995, they were The Triplets—an insular trio of self-absorbed girls who graduated summa cum laude in condescension. Decades later and several years apart, after two of them vanish under identical circumstances from a desolate stretch of asphalt called the Saddle Road, the remaining Triplet seeks Hawaiian PI Noelani Lee’s help to find out what happened to her friends.

Once a favorite target of the trio’s cruel taunts, Noelani swallows her pride and takes the case, beginning with the second Triplet’s unfinished true-crime podcast—in which she was on the verge of identifying the person responsible for her friend’s earlier disappearance. At the same time, Noelani is frustrated at her failure to track down a slippery, larcenous funeral home director, the defendant in a multi-million-dollar lawsuit. But when he’s found bludgeoned to death in his home, Noelani soon unspools links between his radical and xenophobic Hawaiian separatist group, the two missing women, and an illegal adoption ring.

As she explores the unfulfilled adult lives of all three Triplets, and despite flagrant threats against her investigation, Noelani confronts a case paved with barefaced bigotry, long-buried secrets, and brazen denial, all as she questions the meaning of friendship—and comes to grips with her own unhappy past.

Yep, it took me a while to finish this one. I started writing it in August 2019 and had the audacity to believe I would wrap it up and get it out the door during the COVID lock-down. Yeah, that happened. Anyway, I'm rather proud of it and hope Loyal Reader out there will like it, too.

In the meantime I'm already 10,000 words into the eighth Noelani Lee adventure, with the working title THE KUHIO KICK. With any luck, I should finish it before the next pandemic strikes.

Happy reading!

*POD paperbacks are now available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.