Yakudoshi: Age of Calamity

McKinney’s seventh novel once again takes place in Hawaii’s underworld of lounge bars, drugs, gambling and crime.

In Japan, people believe that there are years in a person’s life that are bad luck. For men, the worst is 41. It is yakudoshi. It is the age of calamity.

Bruce Blanc, fresh off a nine-year prison jolt and back on the streets of Honolulu, is about to turn 41. He finds himself embroiled in urban Honolulu’s Asian-American nightlife. Kids lighting up the night with cocaine and killing daylight with Xanax. Girls who spend more time looking at themselves in the mirror than Snow White’s mom; the older divorcees with means who prey on them. And ninety-pound female drug lords and the cops in love with them. A new bar is opening or shutting down daily. The foundation of a new high rise is being poured every day. This is not your mom’s Hawaii. It’s building up, not building out.

When Bruce finds out that during his incarceration, his son, who he has never met, has gone missing, he takes on drug lords, police, and anyone else who stands in the way of his discovery of the truth. “Age of Calamity” is about a changing world and a man who is trying to change with it. It is about how a father’s love can bend his code. But most of all, it’s about how the roughest year in a person’s life can sometimes be the most enlightening one.

Author: Chris McKinney