One Big Itch is set in Honolulu, a playful city that is also haunted, as John Spyer P.I. well knows. Too bad Spyer is a hapa haole (ha-pa how-lee), a half white, and so pays only half attention when Madam Pele herself warns him off the Randolph Haverhill case.

No decent Hawaiian ever says no to and old friend, which makes Spyer the quintessential soft-boiled P.I. Spyer investigates the death of his childhood pal Randy Haverhill, opening his own psychic wounds in the process. Trouble is, Randy, now a celebrity scholar, became too popular with the ladies for his own good. It appears that one of Randy's crazed lovers shot Randy on his own doorstep.

So why do the police persist in the notion that Randy was murdered by his own son?