Rewind book: The House Without a Key, by Earl Derr Biggers (1925)
It's still possible to visit the Halekulani, the Hawaiian hotel where columnist Earl Derr Biggers wrote the first Charlie Chan novel, The House Without a Key.
by Earl Derr Biggers
Bobbs-Merrill
It's still possible to visit the Halekulani, the Hawaiian hotel where columnist Earl Derr Biggers wrote the first Charlie Chan novel, The House Without a Key.
Named after one of the hotel's bars, the novel centres on the killing of a Boston luminary, Dan Winterslip, who lived in a Hawaii house without a key because, typically, the land of leis and ukuleles enjoyed near total tranquillity. "In these friendly trusting islands, locked doors were obsolete," Biggers writes.
Enter the victim's nephew, John Quincy Winterslip. The staid young Bostonian bond trader plans to persuade his hedonistic aunt Minerva to return to Boston before her Hawaii holiday becomes a permanent fixture. But Quincy soon becomes attached to the tropical islands and stays on, too, to support the murder investigation, which is propelled by a humble but canny detective, Charlie Chan.
Biggers' take on the detective and, by extension, Asians in general, is progressive for its time. While the Bostonians who grace the story are uneasy about an Asian pursuing the case, locals treat Charlie with respect because they know he is good at his job. The crack detective is loosely based on a real Honolulu gumshoe, Chang Apana: a tough character who sustained his signature facial scar when a Japanese leper he was expelling lashed out with a sickle.
Charlie is less imposing than his true-life counterpart. "He was very fat indeed, yet he walked with the light dainty steps of a woman. His cheeks were as chubby as a baby's, his skin ivory tinted, his black hair close-cropped, his amber eyes slanting," Biggers writes.