Showing results by author "Neil Plakcy" in All Categories

Openly gay Honolulu homicide detective Kimo Kanapa’aka is faced with a new murder that comes dangerously close to his personal life. About a year and a half has passed since the flames engulfed Waahila Ridge State Park at the end of Mahu Fire. During that time, Kimo and fire investigator Mike Riccardi dated for about six months, but with Kimo so visible and Mike in the closet, the pressures on them increased to the point where their relationship ended. When a fire breaks out at a shopping center Kimo's father used to own and a young boy is killed, they are forced to work together.

Mahu Surfer, the second book in my Mahu Investigations mystery series, sends gay Honolulu homicide detective Kimo Kanapa’aka back to his surfing past. His new boss asks the former competitive surfer to go undercover on Oahu’s North Shore to find the killer of three surfers. The catch: He can't tell any of his family or friends that he has returned to the force, causing him to lie, when he has just come out of the closet and begun to tell the truth about his life. In his return to the North Shore, Kimo discovers trouble in paradise.

Mahu Fire begins as openly gay Honolulu homicide detective Kimo Kanapa’aka attends a local charity event in support of gay marriage. When a bomb disrupts the gala, Kimo, his family, and friends are thrust into a deadly contest between good and evil. A wave of religious fundamentalism sweeps through O’ahu, at the same time as violence against gay and lesbian-owned businesses is on the rise. Coincidence? Kimo doesn’t think so. Working with hunky fire inspector Mike Riccardi, Kimo digs through the ashes to discover a motive for the attacks, as well as who is behind them.

From the moment he sees handsome Liam McCullough showering naked behind a Tunisian bar, ESL teacher Aidan Greene wants to make love to the sexy bodyguard. At first, though, a dead courier and beefy hired thugs get in the way. But as soon as Liam and Aidan head toward a rendezvous with a Tuareg tribe at a remote oasis, they start getting naked together and exploring all the passion Liam hid from as a closeted Navy SEAL and all the love Aidan missed from a long-term boyfriend who has just kicked him to the curb.

Autumn has come to Bucks County, and Steve Levitan has a new job: Develop a conference center for Eastern College at Friar Lake, a few miles from campus. But on his first visit to the property, his golden retriever, Rochester, makes a disturbing discovery: a human hand rising from the dirt at the lake's shore. Whose hand is it? Why was the body buried there? The answers will take Steve, his photographer girlfriend, Lili, and the ever-faithful Rochester to a drop-in center for recovering drug addicts on the Lower East Side....

Mahu -- a generally negative Hawaiian term for homosexuals -- introduces a unique character to detective fiction. Kimo Kanapa'aka is a handsome, mixed-race surfer living in Honolulu, a police detective confronting his homosexuality in an atmosphere of macho bravado within the police force. A man of intelligence, strength, honesty, resourcefulness, and intense dedication to the people of Hawaii, Kimo is a hard-boiled hero you will never forget.

Who hasn't experienced a pang of lust or longing at a photo of a male model? Whether a hundred times life size on a billboard or romping through the pages of a glossy magazine in his Calvins, Tommys, or Ralphs, the male model is the gold standard for masculine beauty. The characters in these stories run the gamut, from the billboard-gracing Aiden in Cynthia Hamilton's "Big Picture", to life models in drawing classes, to runway models, to ordinary guys immortalized in a catalog shoot in T. Hitman's "When Gary Met Larry".

We all know the fairy tale. The handsome prince comes riding up on his white stallion and rescues the beautiful princess from her enchantment with a single kiss. Then they ride off together to live happily ever after. But what if the person longing for that handsome prince is a man himself? And, why not? Neil Plakcy's The Handsome Prince is a mix of traditional and contemporary stories, each with its own unique fairy-tale atmosphere.