Holualoa author publishes cop novel
The Badge, The Balls, and The Bull Sh-t, a new book by Henry (Hank) J. Silva, has been released by Dorrance Publishing Co.
Detective Bobby Olivarez and his partner, Detective Brent Olson, are the lead detectives in several investigations that include murder, extortion and corruption. They involve punk thieves, Mexican cartels and terrorists from the Middle East with a grand plan to take over Hawaii Island. These detectives are former military, can outshoot most, can bench press 400-plus pounds and have the will to never lose. They are innovative, clever and deadly. You certainly would want them on your side.
Silva was born on Oahu three months before the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1941. He attended both public and Catholic schools and obtained a college degree in criminal justice. He followed a police career as his grandfather before him did.
In the military he was assigned to the Army Security Agency. He moved to Hawaii Island in 1966, becoming a police officer. He retired as a major and subsequently worked for the federal government and owned Ex-cop Investigations. He also worked as a reserve officer for 18 years covering beats and for his last five years he investigated cold case homicides.
“The Badge, The Balls, and The Bull Sh-t” is a 238-page paperback.
Info: Visit www.dorrancepressroom.com.
Travel book club to gather Tuesday
Kona Stories hosts a travel book club discussing “Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe” by Kapka Kassabova on Tuesday.
The group meets at 6:30 p.m. at the store.
In this work of narrative reportage, Kassabova returns to Bulgaria, from where she emigrated as a girl 25 years previously, to explore the border it shares with Turkey and Greece.
When she was a child, the border zone was rumored to be an easier crossing point into the West than the Berlin Wall, and it swarmed with soldiers and spies. On holidays in the “Red Riviera” on the Black Sea, she remembers playing on the beach only miles from a bristling electrified fence whose barbs pointed inward toward the enemy: the citizens of the totalitarian regime.
Kassabova discovers a place that has been shaped by successive forces of history: the Soviet and Ottoman empires, and, older still, myth and legend. Her portraits of fire walkers, smugglers, treasure hunters, botanist, and border guards populate the book. But there seem to be nonhuman forces at work here too: This densely forested landscape is rich with curative springs and Thracian tombs, and the tug of the ancient world, of circular time and animism, is never far off.
Kassabova is the author of three poetry collections, the novel “Villa Pacifica,” and the memoirs “Street Without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria” and “Twelve Minutes of Love: A Tango Story.” She lives in Scotland.
Book groups are free if books are purchased at Kona Stories, or a $5 donation is requested.
Info: Call Brenda or Joy at 324-0350 or visit www.konastories.com.