Review: Birds in Paradise by Dorothy St. James
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 19, 2011
Birds in Paradise is a short novella and isn't meant to be a short story or a novel.  For a story like Kyra's and Aloha Pete's, it's the right length.  It didn't take long to read.Kyra is a private investigator on Oahu. There is just one problem with her business, though, and that is that she doesn't have a license.  She's very good at what she does, but it's that darn license that Aloha Pete, a homicide detective, has told her that she has to have or else to jail she goes if she takes any more cases.  In the spirit of his words, she takes on a case of a missing girl.  A young woman comes to Kyra worried about her 18-year-old sister who has disappeared.  She's afraid that she has joined the ranks of the ladies of the night in order to make enough money for the girls to live on and get back home.As Kyra works on this case, other girls go missing, but Kyra discovers that she is being followed.  Pete hasn't found out that she has taken on a case...yet.  Kyra enlists the help of a couple of very colorful characters that she knows on the island to help find the missing girls. As she delves deeper into looking for the girls, she finds out more and more about the sordid side of things that are going on in paradise.There is mystery, romance and humor in this novella.  I enjoyed it very much, and I think that the author's full-length novels are worth checking out.  The setting is also nice and descriptions of Hawaii are a good part of the story, too, and apparently accurate since the author says that her trip there inspired this novella.  Four stars for Birds in Paradise.