Some crime novels grab you by the collar. Others pull up a chair, pour you something cold, and start talking while the trade winds push through the screen door. Kauai Spies and Bald-faced Lies by Larry and Rosemary Mild is the second kind, and it is all the better for it. This is a spy mystery that understands the value of a home-cooked meal, a steady marriage, and a neighbor you can lean on, even while a teenager sits locked in a windowless room and a stolen military secret hangs over everyone’s head. The danger is real, but so is the warmth, and the Milds know exactly how to hold both in the same hand.
The Setup: A Lawyer, a Familiar Face, and a Secret on Kauai
Honolulu attorney Kent Brukner has a past he would rather keep folded and put away. Years ago he worked for an American agency that sent him into Russia, an assignment that nearly cost his wife Katcha her life at the hands of a ruthless FSB officer. These days he drafts trusts and partnership papers, talks himself through long billable hours, and dotes on his toddler son, Paulie. Then a new client walks into his office wearing the face of the man who once hunted him.
That client needs a partnership agreement for a small startup on Kauai that is quietly building a classified missile-tracking device for the United States military. Soon after, the chief financial officer’s teenage son is taken. The kidnappers do not ask for money. They ask for the machine’s specifications. Kent, who never fully stopped being a spy, gets pulled back into the work he believed he had walked away from for good.
Two Crimes, One Island Current
What gives Kauai Spies and Bald-faced Lies by Larry and Rosemary Mild its forward pull is the way two separate troubles run alongside each other, like currents that keep nudging the same boat. On one side sits the Kauai case: a missing boy, a hidden traitor inside the company, and a careful partnership between Kent and a sharp FBI agent named Nancy Ryan, who is recovering from an injury but refuses to sit still. On the other side, Katcha’s immigrant friends find themselves snared in an ugly legal knot back in New York after their own business partner is killed, leaving an estate, a contract, and a fortune in question.
The novel opens not with Kent at all, but with a Russian family fleeing violence in their homeland and clawing their way toward America. That choice could feel like a detour. Instead, it quietly lays the track for almost everything that follows. By the time the two storylines start brushing against each other, you understand why the Milds spent those early pages on borscht, bus tickets, and a deli counter in lower Manhattan.
A quick note on structure, because it shapes the reading experience:
- Short, dated, place-stamped chapters. Each one carries a location and a date, so the book reads a little like a case file you are flipping through.
- Rotating points of view. You spend time with Kent, with the kidnapped boy, with the worried father, and with the immigrant families, which keeps the tension personal rather than abstract.
- A slow burn that earns its payoff. The first act takes its time. Stay with it, because the back half moves fast.
A Cast You Would Happily Share a Table With
Character is where the Milds clearly love to live. Kent and Katcha have one of the more believable marriages in recent crime fiction. They tease each other, scare each other, and cook for each other, and their affection never reads as decoration. Around them stands a full neighborhood of people: two Russian sisters and their husbands rebuilding their lives one print job at a time, a pair of Native Hawaiian farmers fighting to hold onto family land near a military range, a loyal secretary who keeps the law office upright, and a kidnapped teenager whose fear and stubborn cleverness are drawn with real tenderness.
That tenderness matters. When the boy takes stock of his bare little prison and starts hunting for a way out, you feel the cold of the room and the size of his courage. The book never forgets that the stakes are a family, not a gadget.
How the Milds Tell It
The prose here is plain, sturdy, and friendly, the work of writers who would rather be clear than clever. Food does a lot of emotional lifting, from Russian café cooking to Hawaiian plates piled high, and it grounds the suspense in ordinary life. The authors also fold in genuine local history, including the legend of the barking sands of western Kauai and the strange real story of an old Russian fort on the island. These passages give the setting weight without slowing the chase.
It is worth saying plainly: this is closer to a traditional mystery than a blood-soaked thriller. The violence stays mostly off the page, the humor is gentle, and the pleasures are the pleasures of company, place, and a puzzle clicking into place. Readers who want a tense plot wrapped in kindness will find a comfortable home in Kauai Spies and Bald-faced Lies by Larry and Rosemary Mild.
The Team Behind the Badge and the Bench
Part of what makes this book trustworthy is the experience behind it. Larry and Rosemary Mild are a married writing duo and recipients of the 2024 Elliot Cades Award for Literature, Hawaii’s most respected literary honor. They belong to Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and Hawai’i Fiction Writers, and they have been turning out mystery and suspense together for years.
Newcomers should know that this novel is a follow-up to the Milds’ earlier Kent and Katcha: Espionage, Spycraft, Romance, which tells how the couple first met and escaped Russia. You can read this one on its own with no trouble, but fans of the earlier book will get an extra layer of pleasure. The Milds also write the Dan and Rivka Sherman mysteries, beginning with Death Goes Postal, the Paco and Molly mysteries, starting with Locks and Cream Cheese, and Hawaii-set adventures such as Cry Ohana and Honolulu Heat.
If You Enjoyed This, Read These Next
For readers who want more island crime with heart, family, and a strong sense of place, these pair well with Kauai Spies and Bald-faced Lies by Larry and Rosemary Mild:
- Kent and Katcha: Espionage, Spycraft, Romance by Larry and Rosemary Mild. The direct prequel and the natural next stop.
- Iced in Paradise by Naomi Hirahara. A Kauai-set, family-run, food-filled mystery from an Edgar-winning author.
- Honolulu by Alan Brennert. A moving immigrant story rooted in Hawaiian history and place.
- The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey. A warm legal mystery led by a lawyer-sleuth navigating culture and class.
- Midnight at Malabar House by Vaseem Khan. A humane regional whodunit with humor and a strong partnership at its center.
The Verdict
Kauai Spies and Bald-faced Lies by Larry and Rosemary Mild succeeds because it never treats suspense and kindness as opposites. The mystery is clean, the dual plot lands, and the people stay with you after the last page. It is a generous, good-hearted book from a pair of authors who clearly love their islands, their characters, and their readers, and that affection carries the whole story home.
