New tiki book! "Swing, Baby! Swing!"

This is some cool tiki news. A new book by John L. Sheppard, author of Small Town Punk, is all about Tiki!

Swing, Baby! Swing!: A Cleveland Noir tells the tale of a go-go girl who'd gone missing from a West Park nightclub. Tracking her pulls Rose Rowan, private eye, into a "smoky labyrinth of retro bars, rogue cops, tech secrets, and Irish mobsters, all hiding behind the faux-bamboo curtain of Cleveland’s underground Tiki nightlife." Are there hints of Sarasota's Bahi Hut, the Mai-Kai, the Hukilau, Tiki Oasis, the West Coast Tiki Scene, and other odd bits of obscure Tiki history? Maybe. Even the Tiki Revival as documented by Sven Kirsten's Tiki Pop, sure. But the real interest is in how this book describes present-day Ohio's "Dark Tiki" scene. We've read it, and it's a great modern take on hardboiled pulp detective fiction, but set in the present world. And all about Tiki!

Looks pretty cool. But what’s this about: Ohio's "Dark Tiki" scene?

I, too, am curious about this nefarious "dark tiki underground."

Let's just say it's based on real people and places and happenings, but all of the names have been changed. ;)

Seriously this is a really good book and he does well to document and capture the Tiki scene, and Tiki history. The stuff about Dark Tiki, we'll let the book speak for itself. But the stuff is out there...