The first time Chip Hughes came to Hawaii, it was for jungle warfare training. Hughes had a bachelor’s degree in business administration from California Western University — nicknamed “Cal Surf” for its excellent surf breaks — and planned to get an MBA, but a low number in the draft for military service had put his future in jeopardy. Joining the Army National Guard seemed better than waiting passively for his draft notice. Then came the jungle training assignment. Next stop, Vietnam?

False alarm. The war ended, Hughes served six years in the Army National Guard and earned a doctorate in English from the University of Indiana. When he returned to Hawaii in 1981, he had a job waiting at the University of Hawaii. Hawaii has been his home ever since.

In 1995, after finishing two novels he says may never see the light of day, Hughes started work on “Murder on Moloka‘i,” the story of Honolulu-based private investigator — and avid surfer — Kai Cooke, whose investigation of a death on the trail to Kalaupapa gets him entangled with unsavory island power brokers.

Hughes, 73, celebrated the publication of his sixth “Surfing Detective” mystery, “Barking Sands,” in November.

How much of “Barking Sands” — Kai goes to Kauai to investigate a cold case murder committed by a serial killer — comes from the headlines, and from your experiences?

It’s the first time I used a real case. Those murders on Kauai have never been solved. In the book (police detective) Frank Fernandez tells Kai, “We had the guy, but we didn’t have enough to do it in court.”

Is there something you want people to get out of reading your books?

I think the function of genre fiction is to entertain and for people to have fun. You can try to teach them about Hawaii, but if you’re not entertaining them, it’s going to be lost. They have to have fun first, and then you can teach them something as you’re going along.

Stepping back a bit, what got you interested in writing fiction?

I wrote my dissertation on John Steinbeck. Then I revised my dissertation into a book, and then wrote a second book on John Steinbeck. I wanted to write something that was more authentically me. John Steinbeck is a fantastic writer, but I wanted to try to establish my own identity.

You surf, Kai surfs. The descriptions of the surf spots in “Barking Sands” sound like you’ve surfed them. How much “research” is necessary when you’re working a story?

The only time that I actually went out on purpose was for this book. I went out at Waimea Bay in February with a couple of friends. It wasn’t a big day, but when I was on the shoulder of the wave I could see clear down to the bottom of the bay. I got scared before I went on the water, but I wanted to do that for the book to see what it felt like.

You told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 2007 that “Surfing Detective” was going to be a six-book series. “Barking Sands” is the sixth book. Have you changed your mind?

One of the reasons I said that was I wanted to set each one of the books on a different island. But the other reason is that I was probably in my late 30s, early 40s when I started on this, and I was surfing. The “surfing detective” must surf, and the writer of the “surfing detective” must surf! Now I’m 73 and a half. I haven’t quit surfing, but I haven’t been out for a while either. For it to be authentic, I have to get in the water.

Now that you are an established author, have you considered publishing your pre-“Surfing Detective” books?

Maybe someday. One of them takes place in Chicago, and it’s about this guy who invents kind of the first gourmet ice cream bar back in the ’80s. It was a third-person multi-viewpoint novel, which is what was going on when I started writing, and I may go back to it and try to get it out because I put years into it. The one before that is an autobiographical first-person novel about the experiences of a first-year teacher at the University of Hawaii. That one would be even harder (to publish) because I wrote it before I had a blueprint for writing a book.