Damned In Paradise

Damned in Paradise features the private investigator Nate Heller who, through this fiction, is involved with a famous rape case in Hawaii of 1932, where Charlie Chan's real alter ego and defense attorney Darrow get to meet. A fun read, and it brought to my attention what Hawaii was like before it became a state, what its problems were.

This one had a similar theme to the last in the sense of racial hatred and oppression. I guess the white islanders felt that the natives were beneath them. It seems things never change. The same thing happened hundreds of years ago to the people who lived on the mainland.

Other than that, and a similarity in time, the books were different. This one is based on actual events. I was curious to look at the real cases, but I was afraid it would spoil the book for me. Not everything in it was factual. Nate Cole was a fictional character as was the chick he hooked up with early on. I mean literally hooked up. They started going at it the first night they met on the boat to Hawaii. She was some rich society chick who was a cousin of the raped show more Thalia. They called condoms ‘sheiks’ which I seem to remember was a brand (or maybe still is) like Trojan. Funny.

On thing about the story that bugged me was the change in Nate’s character. He became cruder as things progressed. At first he didn’t swear but at the end the f word was pretty well used up. Also, he seemed less jaded earlier on in the novel and terribly world weary at the end. Not enough time had passed to have wrought these changes in him naturally and it was weird.

I also didn’t really understand why Thalia had to lie about being attacked by one gang when she was actually attacked by another. Of course, part of the tape was screwed up during the times when that was explained, so that’s probably why I don’t know.

The characterization of Darrow seemed to jibe with the others I’ve heard of him. Rumpled. Quiet. Very socialist in his views. A champion of the oppressed. Racially blind. This was the last case he tried, the last one of any importance anyway. Even in his 70s he was sharp. show less