In the early 1980s, Eric Redman fell in love with the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, its people – including his wife’s Native Hawaiian relatives – and its history. Already a published author of nonfiction, he owned a home on the South Kohala Coast of the Big Island for 20 years, where he assembled a library of Hawaiian history and was inspired to write fiction.

Against the backdrop of Hawai’i, he created a tangled murder mystery highlighted by insights into life on a tropical island as catharsis and escape from a true murder mystery in his family. Redman’s brother-in-law was murdered in Seattle, and the crime remains unsolved. Redman wrote Bones of Hilo, a beguiling murder mystery reflective of true crime with elements of the culture of Hawai’i, and created Detective Kawika Wong as the center of his book series.

Bones of Hilo was released in hardback, Kindle and audio book editions by Crooked Lane Press on June 8, 2021. His follow up book Death in Hilo, featuring Detective Kawika Wong 12 years later, will be released in February 2024.

Because Redman has a love of Hawai’i and its culture, he donates author’s royalties from his novels to the Daniel and Lydia Makuakane Endowed Scholarship and Fellowship for Hawaiian language students at the University of Hawai`i, Hilo.

Since 2014, Redman also has worked for climate-friendly technology companies, and as a Senior Policy Fellow for Deep Decarbonization at the University of California San Diego’s graduate School of Global Policy and Strategy, where he helps teach a course on Real World Problems of Energy and Environment. His board memberships include the Northwest African American Museum, Earth Talk, and the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.

From 1975 through 2007, he worked as a lawyer in the electric power sector in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, and for the Trans Alaska Pipeline System. Beginning in 2001, he began focusing on the climate impacts of the energy system, and eventually became CEO of Summit Power Group, an independent developer of climate-friendly power plants, including wind, solar, and carbon capture projects. He and his wife helped sponsor the first scientific research expedition to study the climate impacts of soot (black carbon) in the Arctic.

Redman began writing for newspapers and magazines in high school and college, and wrote the nonfiction best-seller The Dance of Legislation at age 23 after serving as an aide to US Senator Warren G. Magnuson (D-WA). Fifty years later, that book is still in print. He has continued writing for newspapers, magazines, law reviews, and as a contributor to books edited by others.

He was born in 1948 and grew up in Seattle, the youngest child of a lawyer and a civic leader. As a scholarship student he was educated at Phillips Academy (Andover), Harvard College, Oxford University (as a Rhodes Scholar), and Harvard Law School.