Fire Knife Dancing

I started this second book just after finishing the first, which I very much enjoyed.Once again set in American Samoa with Detective Sergeant Apelu Soifua investigating (from some information in the novel I think this book is set in the early 2000s).Apelu is sitting in his police car outside the house of Ezra Strand, in a remote part of the island, when the windscreen is shattered by a bullet .... this event leads to him uncovering an inter-island smuggling ring with not just cigarettes & bootleg CDs at stake .... Apelu is accused of being involved & forced into hiding .... he races to uncover the truth.This book has a bit more action in it than the first but neither of them are "action packed" books, more slow & thoughtful. very interesting with the descriptions of life & people in American Samoa.I note that a 3rd book in the series "The Dead Don't Dance" will be released on the 25th March 2014, I cannot wait to get this!

I have enjoyed everything this writer has written, and want to read more about the various characters

Fire Knife Dancing is the second book about Samoan police officer Apelu Soifua, and once again I very much enjoyed spending time in the company of the philosophical detective. Police investigations are a little different in a culture where everyone knows everyone else, way back to their distant ancestors, and where people must answer first to their family chief. Detective Sergeant Soifua is a fascinating character who finds time to consider such questions as how much we are defined by our possessions and our memories. John Enright's writing is assured and elegant, and his observations of human behavior are spot-on. I highly recommend the novel, and I look forward to the next one in the series.

This is John Enright's second book with Detective Sergeant Apelu Soifua and if you liked his first book "Pago Pago Tango" (see my review) then you will undoubtedly enjoy this one as it is very similar. In this book, Soifua is caught up in a simple case of smuggling pirate CDs, tobacco and such but then it turns nasty when it becomes clear that human trafficking is also taking place and Soifua ends up being the prime suspect! The book is once again full of rich cultural detail which I soaked up but, once again, it did slow down the story telling, although the crime story was not treated as secondary as it was in the previous book. Again, a really good read and an improved read on the first book but Mr Enright still hasn't got the balance between including cultural detail and pace of story quite right - the pace needs to be just that little bit quicker then I would award 5 stars.

Apelu is a policeman in American Samoa, an engaging fellow, happy in his work and on good terms with the people he lives with and occasionally has to investigate. In this story he is drawn into a web of smuggling and people trafficking, suspended from duty and accused of murder, all of which he accepts with good humour and a determination to sort out the various mysteries in his path.I thoroughly enjoyed this book, more for the Samoan background, of which I knew very little, than for the crime aspect. Apelu, his fed up wife, Sina, apparently half-crazed and gun-toting Ezra who needs cranberry juice smuggled to him in jail, Asia who is more than she seems and various FBI agents who have no business and no jurisdiction to be there in the first place, and Nick and Nora the enormous dogs, are all memorable characters and the day to day life of Samoa, if initially difficult to grasp, is delightful. Government seems even more confused here than in other parts of the world, and though Apelu is on the run for part of this book he seems to have no particular need to hide.The crimes are dealt with, in the final event quite spectacularly, and Apelu prepares to return to duty and to find out whether his wife will still allow him in the house.I haven't yet read the first book in this series, but I'm looking forward to it.