Juanita Sheridan

This is the fourth of four detective stories set in Hawaii by Ms. Sheridan, but the first one I had read. It is brief, 160 pages in all, but well done and certainly worth the short time it takes to read it. The chief protagonist is Lily Wu, a Chinese-American woman, but the story is from the point of view of her “adopted sister” Janice Cameron. Ms. Sheridan was ahead of her time in portraying a strong, independent woman of Asian-ancestry who was smart, determined and very protean in her ways. She could seemingly change her whole nature, by her make-up, hair, clothes and demeanor to suit her needs. I did notice a focus on the female characters’ physical appearances that would not be “PC” today, as well as the use of the term “oriental” in place of Asian.

The story involves some suspicious business with tea smuggled from China. The tea had to be smuggled because the story takes place just after China had been taken over by the Communists in the early 1950s. Very little was allowed out, legally, from China in those days. Lily Wu is involved due to the connection between the tea, a missing treasure and the murder of a naïve Chinese servant early in the plot. The “Waikiki Widow” is Lady Janet Carleton. Her late husband had been a British diplomat in Shanghai and she had recently come to Honolulu from China after fleeing the Communists. As with any good mystery, there are a number of suspects and the real villain is not disclosed until the very end. I found it hard to tell how much actual sleuthing was done by anyone. It reads like the plot of a good television detective drama with the main characters following leads to a final discovery.

I like the way Ms. Sheridan can, as so many excellent writers do, capture the character of a scene or a person with one small detail. In one case, she does this by noting a person’s lack of that quality which indicates an ability to make adjustments to new ideas or cultures by noting that she pronounced “Pekoe” in a way that rhymes with “peck” rather than “peek.” There is also an authenticity to the details of the story, from the various locations in Honolulu to aspects of Chinese culture. The author lived in Hawaii for a time and put her familiarity with the people and places to good use. Anyone familiar with Honolulu will recognize most of the place names which have not changed in the 50+ years since the book was written. I was impressed by her insights into the mores of Chinese society, of which, being Japanese myself, I have also had only a secondary understanding.

In a small way, this book is betrayed by the lack of care on the part of the original publisher. The garish cover illustration and the title suggests a lower quality, as if a fine movie were advertised as if it were a grade B film. I also noticed a lack of editing most notable in some punctuation errors and few spots where there was some confusion in the flow of a paragraph which could have easily been fixed by a good editor.

Ken Tokuno

May, 2009