Just before Thanksgiving in 1941, musician Katy Green gets a call from fellow musician Ivy offering her a job in Ivy's new all-girl swing band. Ivy already has a gig lined up on the SS Lurline, set to sail from San Francisco to Honolulu at the end of the month. Several Hawaiians of Japanese descent are on board, and some of their fellow passengers don't try very hard to hide their racist attitudes.

My reading experience was more educational than entertaining. I learned some new things about Hawaii from the novel. The author lived in Hawaii for several years, and he used several of the characters to illustrate aspects of Hawaiian life and culture that most tourists don't see. The author's afterword reveals that he did extensive research on the SS Lurline, a real ship that did indeed sail to Honolulu in November-December 1941. The author's strength is in the descriptive passages of the book, which is no surprise since he has a background in journalism. Some of the characters leaned towards stereotypes. The dialogue was sometimes annoying, mainly because no one ever seemed to finish a conversation. The plot was somewhat unfocused, shifting back and forth between murder mystery, adventure, and espionage. I didn't like the mystery well enough to seek out other books in this series, but if the author ever writes a non-fiction book about Hawaii, I'd love to read it. ( )