“Louis Looks Back: The Rise and Fall of Honolulu’s Top Cop.”

It’s the second book promising an inside look at one of Hawaii’s biggest public corruption cases, which ended in felony convictions and prison sentences for Louis Kealoha, who had been chief of the Honolulu Police Department, and his wife, a top deputy city prosecutor who was in charge of prosecutions of career criminals.

When I saw that the new book was now available, I quickly ordered the Kindle version for immediately electronic delivery.

The book by former reporter, Mary Zanakis, runs to 216 pages in the print edition, including a glossary of terms and an index. It was published by Watermark Publishing, a local publishing company (“Louis Looks Back: The Rise and Fall of Honolulu’s Top Cop“).

“Throughout a federal investigation and three trials, Chief Kealoha has never spoken publicly about the case,” Zanakis writes in her introduction. “This book is his voice. He will detail his actions, which, you will find, are very different from the government’s narrative.”

Zanakis said she approached the project “as a professional journalist of nearly thirty years.”

The book turned out to be a big disappointment. It was basically a long-winded exercise in finger-pointing. He did nothing. She did it all. He knew nothing. She did it all. His mistake was trusting her. She did it all. Blah, blah, blah. “How was I supposed to know?” Etc, etc, etc.

I’m sorry to say Zanakis appears more an apologist for Louis Kealoha than a journalist doing her professional best.

One thing that Zanakis, the experienced journalist, failed to do was ask the kinds of questions a reporter would ask when their subject’s story fails the most basic smell tests. Louis Kealoha’s tale begs for serious questioning that would probe its weak points, and there are many. Without any such testing, the whole tale remains absurdly implausible.

Just about the only admission the former chief makes involved his testimony that led to a mistrial in the prosecution of Katherine Kealoha’s uncle, Gerard Puana, for allegedly stealing the chief’s mailbox, a crime that was shown to be the fictional product of police corruption orchestrated by Katherine Kealoha.

While on the stand in Puana’s federal trial, Louis blurted out that Puana had previously been arrested and convicted of entering a neighbor’s home. Louis finally gets around to admitting that he knew it was wrong, but that he had a reason for doing it. He said he was being shown a video of the mailbox theft, and had been asked if he recognized the man in the grainy, blurry video. He realized that he didn’t recognize Puana in that video, but didn’t want to say it. When a mistrial was declared and the case abruptly ended, the evidence of the corrupt “set up” of Puana was forwarded to the FBI by the U.S. Attorney. At that point, the chief must have had one of those sinking feelings that he was now in trouble. How did he feel? What did he do? When did he and his wife get lawyered up? What happened in that process? Did his illusion of innocence really continue for another two years right up until he received a “target letter” naming him as a target of the criminal grand jury?

The questions go on and on. But they aren’t asked or answered.

I wish I could recommend this book, but I can’t. If you want to know about the case, Alex “Ali” Silvert’s “The Mailbox Conspiracy,” is a much better bet.