Honolulu Noir (Eddie O'Brien, PI)

Eddie O’Brien is a character I created for a series of hardboiled PI stories set in post-WWII Honolulu. To date, six of those tales have been published in a variety of venues. Below are brief descriptions of those pieces with links to the sites where they first appeared. The seventh in the series, “Better Press,” is on the way.

Do the Right Thing … Eddie’s investigation into a missing person enmeshes him in the world of espionage on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Hackwriter’s)

Ghosts … Our intrepid PI, as always, finds the killer. What he discovers, however, precipitates a rather thorny moral dilemma. This story was an Editor’s Choice selection on Freedom Fiction Journal.

Sleeping Dogs … Another tale featured on Freedom Fiction Journal. Here, O’Brien finds a woman’s missing brother. Along the way, he discovers that his client hasn’t exactly been telling him the whole truth.

Taking Care of Business … This one can be found on The Yard: Crime Blog. The detective identifies a John Doe. The action really heats up when he informs the dead man’s father.

The Last Word … Curses, ancient Hawaiian gods and island magic. What’s not to like? (Freedom Fiction Journal).

The Price of Doing Business … Eddie helps a wealthy island matriarch get justice for her granddaughter. Justice, though, can mean different things to different people! ( Another Editor's Choice on Freedom Fiction Journal).

If you are a fan of noir, give some of these stories a read. They’re full of local color, history, racial tension, betrayal and all the usual tropes of the genre. I don’t think you'll be disappointed.

 

 

Two Men in A Window

I have always been fascinated by the JFK assassination. The truth about that event is, to me, the Holy Grail of conspiracy theories rivalling even the Roswell crash. Indeed, one of my earliest, coherent childhood memories is of watching a black and white TV (with rabbit ear antenna) and being transfixed by the grainy images of large horses pulling some type of cart. My mother was sitting next to me and she was crying. In time, I came to understand that we had been watching JFK's funeral.

The following story ("Two Men in A Window") is, in part, inspired by that memory as well as by an old newspaper article I happened to see while aimlessly surfing the web as I was waiting for an appointment. Although centered around a "real" historical event, this is wholeheartedly a work of fiction. The story intentionally blurs the lines between fact, speculation, documentary and the sheerest fancy.

Additionally, and from a more philosophical standpoint, it suggests that imagination and narrative invention are modes of knowing equal to -- or perhaps even more powerful than -- direct experience and empirical observation.

Two Men in a Window by James C. Clar © copyright 2026

What follows is a work of fiction. It makes no claim to truth, adduces no hidden evidence, and corrects no official record. Any resemblance to documented events or persons is intended for literary purposes only. If this exercise in speculation seems plausible, or unsettling, that effect belongs solely to the power of narrative. Or to history’s occasional tendency to mimic and even outdo invention …

We begin, then, with an item from the Dallas Morning News, December 19, 1978:

“Several witnesses, interviewed years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, now state that two men were observed earlier that morning at a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. Officials caution that memories degrade and that such claims are difficult to verify so far removed in time from the actual events.”

This yellowed and rather elliptical clipping entered my possession by way of an antique trunk purchased at an estate sale in Ithaca, New York. The woman running the sale shrugged when I asked about it.

“Belonged to a professor, I think,” she told me. “That or a collector. I don’t recall.”

The clipping was not, I should say at once, the most extraordinary thing in the chest. That distinction belongs to a memorandum typed on onion-skin paper, unsigned, and to a photograph of a man who, at first glance, appears to be asleep behind the wheel of a Ford Galaxie. The photograph is stamped Property of the Dallas Police Department and dated March 3, 1964.

The memorandum refers, obliquely, to a probationary patrolman whose name appears once and then not again. The letters of the name are blurred by carbon. I will render it as Randall.

This Randall, assigned that morning to a route that blew a kiss at Dealey Plaza without embracing it, reported something he saw. Or perhaps thought he saw. The memo hedges. It takes refuge in the conditional.

The young patrolman saw a movement in a window where movement was not expected.

“I’m telling you, Sarge, there were two of them.”

“Two what?”

“Men, up on the sixth floor. I saw …” He hesitated, as if replaying it over again. “They seemed to be passing something back and forth.”

“You’re new, kid,” the Sergeant said after a moment. “Windows cause reflections, the sun casts shadows …”

“I know what I saw.”

“I’m sure you do. Return to your patrol.”

After the shooting – and after the plaza became a grammar lesson in the past tense – Randall told his story over and over again. Each retelling shaved off a certainty, added a maybe. He eventually spoke to the F.B.I. where he was humored.

For the purposes of this story, we’ll allege that the memorandum supports that thesis. To be humored is to be listened to without being believed, to be granted a hearing but denied the courtesy of consequence or follow-up. Or, it may be an indication of something more than disrespect, of something genuinely nefarious. I’ll leave such conclusions to the reader.

“Officer Randall,” an official voice might have placated him from across a desk. “We appreciate you coming forward. We’ll take it from here …”

The Bureau’s subsequent report, which I have not seen, is summarized in a marginal note: Lacks corroboration. That annotation is underscored. The hand that wrote it pressed down hard, as if certainty could be achieved by pressure.

The “several witnesses” of the clipping came later, much later. Memory, like a witness who arrives at a trial after the verdict, is always suspect. It’s not just that they spoke after the fact, it’s the fact that they spoke long after the story of what happened the morning of November 22, 1963 had learned how to tell itself … as good stories often do.

The paper also cautions us: distrust the late, the vague, the ambiguous. That caution, however, doesn’t prevent us from filling in the gaps with our imagination.

“Is it conceivable,” I once suggested to a friend as we discussed the possibilities, “that imagination is more reliable than memory?”

In my imagination, therefore, the photograph in the trunk shows Randall dead from an apparent heart attack, not asleep. He is slumped forward; his forehead resting on the steering wheel. The Galaxie is parked precisely, the keys are in the ignition.

I would have the memorandum quote an anonymous officer in a voice I have invented, “no signs of trauma.”

I would also be tempted to assert further that Randall was eliminated. I am equally tempted to say that he was a man whose heart simply failed him, as even young hearts sometimes do. The universe, it must be admitted, is frequently indifferent to our desire for causes. While he never actually said this, the great Argentinian artificer, Borges, might well have observed that infamy requires intention and coherence; death does not.

What, then, are we to make of the two men who were seen on the sixth-floor of the Book Depository? The clipping insists on their belatedness. The memorandum insists on their being merely provisional. The photograph insists on nothing at all. Perhaps there were two men. Perhaps there was one man and a reflection. Perhaps Randall saw the ghost of the future, a duplication of a figure created by the event itself; a second figure conjured by the demands of the story that would soon follow.

It is possible, and this is the sheerest conjecture, that the authorities needed only one shooter and thereafter taught us to see only one. It may well also be that Randall was wrong and right in equal measure, as were the subsequent witnesses.

The clipping rests safely in the trunk. The memorandum is folded neatly in a book of essays. The photograph is pinned to the corkboard above my desk. This story, like the event it circumscribes, refuses clear resolution. I offer it not as evidence but as a footnote to our doubt, as a gloss attesting to the lasting efficacy of imagination and literary invention.

The End 

 

What We've Become

Kahala, otherwise known as “the Beverly Hills” of the Pacific, is an area along the south shore of Oahu which features some of the costliest property on the island. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, much of that property was purchased by foreign investors. When the economy flagged in the early 2000's, some of the mansions along Kahala Avenue were virtually abandoned. As I walked through the neighborhood at the time I thought, “what a great setting for a series of dystopian stories.” From a recent re-reading of J.G. Ballard and Stephen Jay Gould, this story evolved … pun intended!

“What We’ve Become” by James C. Clar © copyright 2026

The Kahala Resort sat stranded on the shore, a carcass of chrome, steel and glass. The rising sea had swallowed the first-floor decades ago. The smell of rust and iodine clung to everything. A handful of survivors remained on the coast. Others had either left Oahu or had fled to the inland valleys.

Dr. Frain arranged the chessboard on his lanai. He placed each piece on the middle of its square. Precision mattered more than anything to him of late.

Adamski appeared on schedule, a gaunt figure in a sun-bleached Aloha shirt. It was no longer possible to discern the garment’s original color or design. The man’s stride was measured, as though he were carefully calculating the distance between steps.

“You’ll take white again,” Adamski declared as he lowered himself into his chair.

“I find the order of choosing the opening reassuring,” Frain answered. He moved his pawn to c4.

“Order is an illusion,” Adamski, a former Mathematics professor, replied. He placed the corresponding piece on c5, obliging his opponent with the English Symmetrical Opening. “We discover patterns after the fact. It’s a habit of the human mind to invent them even if they’re not there.”

“As you always say.” Frain glanced at his companion. “Your wife is well?”

Adamski nodded.  

They played on in silence save for the click of the pieces. Eventually, Adamski asked, “What are you writing this week?”

“A treatise,” Frain answered enthusiastically. “On the ocean … the radiation … the consequent mutations. The world declares it a catastrophe. It’s not. It’s a preparation for what we are becoming.”

“Which is precisely … what?”

“Who can say? A new form or, I should say, new forms. Undoubtedly forms better suited to survive what is to come.”

“You make it seem almost providential.”

“Providence … or Nature,” Frain said with reverence. “I don’t see the difference.” The doctor made his move and looked up. “Checkmate.”

Their evenings passed in tranquil regularity. Twice a week they met, trading fragments of philosophy, natural history and ecological speculation across the chessboard. By day Adamski glimpsed Frain on his lanai, eyes turned toward the empty horizon where the ocean shimmered like quicksilver.

One night Frain remarked, “You never invite your wife to watch.”

“She prefers to be alone,” Adamski replied as he rose to leave. “I should go. She’s waiting.”

On Tuesday Frain laid out the board as usual, but Adamski didn’t show. Wednesday, the doctor’s anticipation turned to restlessness. By Thursday it became concern. He walked to Adamski’s suite. He knocked on the door. No answer. He tried again. The door opened at a touch.

The rooms were tidy, what meager furniture they owned was aligned with mathematical precision. On the dining table he spotted a chessboard. He recognized a particularly sharp position from their last game.

“Professor?” Frain’s voice was amplified by the stillness. He moved through the corridor. The last door stood ajar, revealing two chairs facing each other.

Adamski was slumped in one, chin sunk, mouth slack. But for the stillness of his chest, one might have thought him dozing.

In the chair opposite, sat his wife.

Frain froze, comprehension slowly dawning. The woman’s body had withered into something delicate, like the petals of an exotic flower pressed between the pages of time. She had been waiting indeed. And in that time, Darwinian forces had transformed her into something entirely new.

Frain walked back to his rooms deep in thought. Inside, he took out his treatise and began to write. Once done for the night, he fetched the chessboard. “I’ll play your side for you as well, professor,” he said aloud. “Together, we’ll wait to see what you’ve become.”

That night the doctor dreamed of vast oceans respiring, exhaling new species with each incoming tide. The notes he penned upon waking read like a hymn to patterns only he could fathom. The chessboard and the sea were conspiring to teach him the rules of a new game, one with limitless possibility and inexhaustible variation.

The End

Rope a Man Can Trust

A new 600-word story of mine published today on Sudden Flash Magazine entitled, "Rope a Man Can Trust." Just having a little fun with an archetypal tale of betrayal and, perhaps, remorse.