The Bone Field

The Bone Field is the second book in Debra Bokur's series about Kali Māhoe, a Maui detective and expert in Hawaiian culture. Bokur is a travel writer, and the series uses its crime plots to show both the beauty and the darker side of Hawaii, along with the islands' culture.

Kali is called to a strange crime scene on Lana'i. Deep in a trench in the island's pineapple fields, someone has found the skeletal remains of a person buried decades ago inside an old refrigerator. The body has no head. In place of the skull is a large, ornately carved wooden pineapple.

Kali's investigation points her toward an unlikely suspect, an illegal cock-fighting operation and a strange symbol tied to a religious cult that disbanded long ago. The case belongs to a series of cold-case ritual murders, and it leads her through tales of vengeful spirits and into the company of far more human monsters. Kali relies on logic and reason rather than the unexplained, which may help her make sense of the increasingly baffling events. The dormant pineapple fields of Lana'i have not yet given up their darkest secrets.