2 novels by Hawaii authors bring drama to courtroom, classroom

“Forgive Me My Trespasses”
Ian M. Evans
Self-published, $21.99

“Shame was everywhere,” reflects Dave Gordon, a professor of psychology at an obscure upstate New York college and the unreliable narrator of this comic, occasionally provocative first novel by Ian M. Evans, a clinical affiliate in the psychology department at the University of Hawaii.

A Hawaii presidential candidate has had an extramarital affair with a young woman, Felicity Rimbert, their trysts captured in a video that goes viral. She shows up at Dave’s office seeking therapy.

Moved by Felicity’s remorse, Dave asks his graduate students whether psychotherapy can and should try to treat feelings of shame and guilt (a question that seems specious, in light of the Oedipus complex). How, Dave asks, do we judge when people who do good things in the public sphere — a bishop, Ted Kennedy — do bad things in private?

A student promptly files a formal sexual harassment complaint against Dave, who acknowledges, “I tried to think carefully about my own motives. … I had to recognize that I got a little carried away with sexual themes in class.”

The talk in the book is often appealing, with a literary madcap tone reminiscent of “The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish” in David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas.” The academic politics and sexual shenanigans of David Lodge’s novels also come to mind.

Tone and talk, however, are not enough to carry a novel, and this one fails to deliver enough action. Still, this good-humored book bravely explores sensitive topics with an eye to compassion and forgiveness.

“Tropical Judgments”
David Myles Robinson
Self-published, $19.95

When musician Auntie Irene Kamaka is brutally murdered in a parking lot one evening after a performance, attorney Pancho McMartin is tapped to defend the one accused of the killing, a 19-year-old, homeless African-American named Jackson Steel.

At first glance Jackson is a “mean-looking boy” with a disfigured face, but after hearing about his miserable childhood, Pancho, with a rush of sympathy, amends that to “young, hurt and sad.” He’s convinced Jackson was set up. But why?

Also on trial in this hard-bitten, savvy novel (author David Myles Robinson is a retired Honolulu judge) are racial stereotyping and prejudice in Hawaii.

Racial tensions arise in the lead-up to the trial, as African-Americans, including a high school student, get beaten up all over town. Pancho, his staff and even the judge receive death threats.

Bobby Lopaka, Irene’s cousin, smells a rat. He wants to find who really killed her. A Big Island rancher, he is also the “purported head of Hawaii’s crime syndicate” and a former cop whose “light green eyes were chameleonlike in their ability to either put someone at ease or scare them to death.”

Lopaka also once owned the largest security guard company in the islands and purportedly controlled the Waikiki entertainment scene as well as various politicians.

As collateral killings pile up, readers of this fast-paced, smart-talking book will keep turning the pages out of pleasure as well as suspense.

The characters are well drawn, and the portrayal of Honolulu society, from Mayor Wright housing to a Gold Coast apartment, is true to the challenges and contrasts we face.