When author and teacher Ian MacMillan died in 2008, aspiring writers in Hawai'i lost a skilled and thoughtful mentor.

Now Mutual Publishing has released one of MacMillan's last works (there are unpublished manuscripts to come), "The Bone Hook" (paper, $13.95), reminding us that MacMillan, for all the time he spent teaching, was first a writer.

The book is the story of a pair of misfits — shy, awkward Emilio and controlled, slightly compulsive Terry — who together explore a generations-old mystery. They solve it, but more important than locating the artifacts for which they searched, they find themselves and, possibly, each other.

If that makes the book sound pat and predictable, I've done MacMillan an injustice. In this shortish novel, MacMillan employs the twin tools of dialog and characterization with the skill of a master. There are no simplistic characters; there is no false talk. And nothing is easy for anyone.

Throughout the considerable cast of characters run themes of mental instability — paranoia, compulsiveness, isolation, narcissism. And yet the book is never overwrought and the characters — even the villains — remain interesting and multifaceted. Regret is a theme: One character is focused on an "alternate life," a road sadly not taken and no longer open to him.

If all this sounds grim, it somehow isn't. MacMillan employs some charming conventions. He invents a word, "folca," that sums up life's serendipitous moments, as in, "This has folca"(and when you read the origin of the word you'll laugh out loud). He uses humor to break the tension: Even as Emilio and Terry face a dangerous mission, he hands her a cup of coffee and says, "Lion. It's on sale at Longs Three ninety-nine for the ten-ounce."

He uses both external and internal dialog to layer characters, making them fully human.

MacMillan was not an Islander born and raised. He came here in 1966 to teach at the University of Hawai'i and wisely, cautiously, felt his way. In an interview with The Advertiser some years ago, he said that he did not feel he could write about Hawai'i until he had been here for some time.

A prolific writer who won many awards and was a sought-after teacher and speaker, he continued to write about themes in which he had previously been interested, notably in the award-winning WWII novel, "Village of a Million Spirits, a Novel of the Treblinka Uprising," (Steerforth Press/Penguin Books, 2000).

He did not publish a work set here until 1998, with "The Red Wind" (Mutual), about a canoe builder who lives between the old Hawai'i and the new.

"The Bone Hook" is the third of his Island-based novels, and if it has a flaw, it is that he still seems to be tiptoeing just a bit around the pit that yawns before any non-kama'äina writing about Hawaiian culture and issues. There is just a slight hint of anxiousness in passages in which an angry Hawaiian character is portrayed and in those in which spiritual forces come into play.

In the end, nothing is neatly tied up. MacMillan's plot drifts off in the way that real life does. In real life things aren't tied up in tight knots like a braid of sennit; we don't always understand everything that's happened to us; many things are not fair, not all debts are paid, things don't work out as planned. But we go on. MacMillan catches that energy, that passion, that survival instinct. He leaves the action on a prosaic note (it involves Vienna sausage) and you don't know what happens but you know it's going to be all right. And that's enough.

P.S. For aspiring writers, or anyone interested in MacMillan as a person, a compelling part of this book is the foreward, an homage to MacMillan by Julie Lynn Mitchell, a short but poignant description of his writing life. The piece also traces the themes that appear again and again in MacMillan's work. Few publishers would choose to devote space to such a revealing piece of context; kudos to Mutual.