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    Pago Pago Tango
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    Pago Pago Tango
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    Pago Pago Tango
    Audiobook8 hours

    Pago Pago Tango

    Written by John Enright

    Narrated by Phil Gigante

    4.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

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    About this audiobook

    Detective Sergeant Apelu Soifua spent seven years in the San Francisco Police Department, where the job was just a job and solving crimes required cool detachment. But back home on American Samoa, life is personal-especially for a cop. Because on a small island where no one is a stranger and secrets are widely known but never discussed, solving crimes requires a certain…finesse.

    Here, Apelu must walk the line between two cultures: Samoan versus American, native versus new. And that gulf never yawns wider than when a white family's home in Pago Pago is burglarized. And what appears to be a simple, open-and-shut case turns out to anything but. As the evidence piles up, Apelu follows a tangled trail between cultures, dead bodies, hidden codes, and a string of lies on his hunt for the ugly truth buried at the heart of paradise.

    Set against the steamy backdrop of the Samoan jungle, this thoughtful whodunit introduces a memorable new gumshoe to the ranks of detective fiction.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateOct 23, 2012
    ISBN9781469218250
    Author

    John Enright

    John Enright was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1945. He earned a bachelor’s degree from City College of New York while working full-time at Fortune, Time, and Newsweek magazines. He later received a master’s degree in folklore at UC Berkeley, before starting a career in publishing. In 1981, Enright left the United States to teach at the American Samoa Community College. He spent the next twenty-six years working for environmental, cultural, and historical resource preservation on the islands in the South Pacific. Over the past five decades, his essays, articles, short stories, and poems have appeared in more than ninety books, anthologies, journals, periodicals, and online magazines. His collection of poems 14 Degrees South won the University of the South Pacific Press’s inaugural International Literature Competition. Enright currently lives in Owensboro, Kentucky, with his wife Connie Payne.  

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    Reviews for Pago Pago Tango

    4.5/5

    4 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This book is set in American Samoa, on the island of Tutuila, at Pago Pago. PAGO PAGO TANGO is a police procedural, the first of a series centred on Detective Sergeant Apelu Soifua. The island is small, where every one knows everyone else. Samoan culture and values struggle to survive in the face of onslaughts by palangi (North American culture). Many of the traditional ways have already died, although Apelu can remember them being active when he was a boy, before his father took the family to San Francisco.Now the Samoan economy is also struggling to survive and traditional goods have been replaced by a thriving drug trade. In reality the palangi are the controllers of the trade and the profits. Natural resources have been plundered and the fishing is almost gone. Serious crime like homicides are rare, but in PAGO PAGO TANGO a relatively unimportant burglary has connections with much more serious money making.What is interesting about this novel is the way the author describes Samoan culture at every opportunity. The reader gets a look at Samoan traditions and past, contrasted with what it has become.An interesting and instructive read, as well as being a tightly plotted novel.
    • 3/5
      Pago Pago Tango is set in American Samoa and introduces the reader to Detective Sergeant Apelu Soifua. The island is small, where every one knows everyone else. Samoan culture and values struggle to survive in the face of onslaughts by palangi (North American culture). Many of the traditional ways have already died, although Apelu can remember them being active when he was a boy, before his father took the family to San Francisco. Soifua is uneasy when he's called to the home of Gordon Trurich, an executive with the Sea King Tuna Company, the second largest employer on the island of American Samoa. Trurich lived in Tafuna Plain, the area preferred by the majority of the Americans who lived there. Stolen from the Trurich home were a videotape recorder, a collection of videotapes, a small amount of cash, everything from a single cabinet to a handgun that was used in a gangland killing. Of course, Trurich neglected to mention the latter item on Soifua's visit, but this odd assortment of stolen items leads him into the dark depths of lies, drugs, secret codes, and murder.

      Although the mystery itself isn't terribly demanding or particularly exciting, this debut shows some promise with a good balance between plot and character introduction. What is interesting about this novel is the way the author describes Samoan culture and the reader gets a look at Samoan traditions and past, contrasted with what it has become.
    • 3/5
      A cozy mystery set on one of the islands in American Samoa. Apule is a Samoan detective. He lived for a while in California, but has returned with his family, to become a low class case detective on the local police force. He stumbles along, ala Columbo style, although you know that's really just an act and he really is pulling the disparate pieces of a drug smuggling crime together. But there a dirty cop involved, a burglary that isn't quite right, and now whites and Samoans are being murdered, in what looks like disparate crimes, but really are related. Will he crack the case before he gets murdered too?
    • 4/5
      A police procedural in Samoa! The island atmosphere, the racial and tribal distinctions, the modern troubles and old customs are interwoven to form a vivid picture of Samoa through the eyes of Apulo, a seargeant in the local police. First of what I hope will become a series.
    • 5/5
      First Line: Once upon a time this had been a road.Detective Sergeant Apelu Soifua was born on an island in American Samoa, and when he was a child, his father moved the family to the mainland where, as an adult, Apelu joined the San Francisco Police Department. After seven years on the force, he moved his own family back to Samoa to take care of his ailing father. His wife works for a shipping company, Apelu is a detective sergeant on the island police force, and they have four children.Apelu's background makes him very familiar with the differences between the two cultures that co-exist on the islands. He needs every bit of that knowledge with a case he's determined to solve. He is called to the home of a white family in Pago Pago. They've been burglarized, and after speaking with the wife, Apelu goes to the canning factory to meet with the husband, who gives him a list of the stolen items. At first, it seems like an open-and-shut case, but as the detective starts gathering evidence and piecing together clues, he realizes that it's anything but a clear-cut case of breaking and entering.As Apelu investigates, it becomes very clear that living on a small island where everyone knows everyone else has its advantages. He has to navigate a twisted track between the Samoan and American cultures, finding mystifying codes, dead bodies, and plenty of lies along the way.Although the real villain's insertion into the plot was a bit too transparent for me, I really enjoyed this book. It's perfect for any armchair traveling mystery lover. Enright's descriptions of the Samoan landscape-- where the frigate birds are as much a part of the sky as the clouds-- are vivid and poetic. He shares a great deal of information about Samoan culture and the effects that Western civilization has had on the islands. All these insights may seem like so many interesting sidetrips in the narrative, but they aren't; they are vital to understanding how Apelu approaches the investigation.I was so engrossed in this book that I finished it much too soon. Now I have to wait in hopes of another investigation with the intriguing Detective Sergeant Apelu Soifua. I highly recommend Pago Pago Tango to any crime fiction lovers who like strong stories, intriguing characters, vivid, exotic settings, and learning about other cultures.