The House Without a Key (Charlie Chan, Book 1)

I came to Charlie Chan without preconceptions, never having seen the movies. So I could enjoy this cultural icon like a fresh discovery. Granted the book has an old-fashioned flavor, but that's part of the charm of reading a work first published in 1925. Charlie Chan is the best detective on the force in Honolulu, and his colleagues are pretty smart too. They need to be, to figure out who killed Dan Winterslip, a rich man so comfortable on the friendly island of Waikiki that he doesn't ever lock his doors. Dan's nephew, John Quincy Winterslip, arrives on a visit to Hawaii to find his uncle and host murdered. The young man is very Bostonian, upright, uptight, a dedicated banker and engaged to an aristocratic Bostonian. He can't wait to get home, but he won't leave Waikiki till his uncle's murderer is found. The local police are a friendly bunch and adopt John Quincy as an informal fellow investigator. So we can enjoy John Quincy's adventures side by side with Charlie Chan's expert sleuthing. Much of the appeal of Charlie Chan is his elaborate style of speech and somewhat eccentric grammar. Chan handles his second language with the loving affection of a scholar. Biggers had an appreciation of the multiracial, multicultural character of Hawaii that was rare in his day. I'm now deep into Chan mystery #2, The Chinese Parrot...

I am currently trying to re-read my past and fill in the gaps at the same time. The idea is to re-read, for example, "To Kill a Mockingbird," to see what effect it has on me 40 years later. Or to read a Charlie Chan book when I saw some movies but never read the book. "The House Without a Key," is simply fabulous. Much better written than I would have ever imagined and with a better plot. The movies did a definite disservice to Earl Der Biggers' talents as a writer. This book is a definite must for any mystery fan.

Charlie Chan is introduced in Chapter VII of this first book of the popular series about an oriental detective from Honolulu. Although playing a minor role in the beginning, Charlie asserts himself by the end of the case. John Quincy Winterslip, a young lawyer from Boston, is on a trip to Hawaii to visit a wealthy relative, Dan Winterslip. En route he is asked to find and destroy an ohia wood box which is in the attic of Dan's San Francisco house. He fails to get the box and learns on his arrival in Hawaii that Dan has been murdered. The leading suspect is Jim Egan, owner of a ramshackle hotel on the beach. The essential clue is a wrist watch with an illuminated dial which is damaged. Motivated by his growing interest in Egan's daughter Carlotta, John Quincy helps Charlie and the police solve the crime. The real hero, however, is Charlie who manages to stay one step ahead of everybody else. In 1932 Earl Biggers wrote a report to his Harvard classmates on the occasion of the twenty-fifth reunion of the class of 1907. He described how he happened to conceive of creating an ethnic Chinese detective for a mystery story set in Hawaii:"But my memories of the islands were rather dim; I dropped into a library to brightem them a bit by a perusal of recent Honolulu newspapers. In an obscure corner of an inside page, I found an item to the effect that a certain hapless Chinese, being too fond of opium, had been arrested by Sergeants Chang Apana and Lee Fook, of the Honolulu Police." Because of this chance reading of a newspaper item, Biggers was inspired to use Chan in THE HOUSE WITHOUT A KEY which was published in 1925 after running serially in the SATURDAY EVENING POST.

I have read all of the Charlie Chan books, and this is by far the best. All of the novels are literate and well-plotted, but THE HOUSE WITHOUT A KEY is more complex than the others. And the solution to the crime is perhaps one of the most original, yet still plausible, to have been created in the history of the detective novel.A mystery gem. Good to see it back in print.

For anyone who loves Hawaii or a good mystery, this book is for you. It takes you back to the romance of Hawaii as it used to be. I started reading it on the beach at Waikiki and loved it so much I couldn't put it down. P.S. If you are visiting Oahu, be sure to stop for cocktail hour at The House Without A Key at the Halekulani Hotel.