B is for Earl Derr Biggers

Today I am featuring The Chinese Parrot (1926) by Earl Derr Biggers for my submission for the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme. Please visit the post at Mysteries in Paradise to check out other entries for this letter.

Biggers wrote six Charlie Chan mysteries. The Chinese Parrot is the second book in the series. The first book in the series is set in Hawaii, where Charlie is a detective on the Honolulu Police Force.

I did not realize when I chose this book for a CFA post on police procedurals that Charlie was on holiday for this outing. My plans were to feature police procedural novels that fit a more standard definition of a police procedural novel.

It is difficult to settle on a definitive description but this one by Julian Symons in Bloody Murder (revised ed., 1985) comes close to what I am looking for.

The police novel, or the police-procedural as it is now called, concentrates upon the detailed investigation of a crime from the point of view of the police, and in the best examples of the kind does so with considerable realism.

However, it is not that unusual for an author of a police procedural series to take a break from the standard fare and send his detective on holiday, so I decided to go ahead and include this book. (Not to mention the fact that I thought about moving to the next in the series, but it has the same type of plot.)

In this book, Charlie has traveled to the mainland (San Francisco) to deliver a valuable string of pearls. He is doing this as a favor for his old friend and owner of the pearls, Sally Jordan, who needs to sell them because she has lost all of her considerable fortune. Alexander Eden, another old friend of Sally's, has negotiated the deal.

The opening paragraph:

Alexander Eden stepped from the misty street into the great, marble-pillared room where the firm of Meek and Eden offered its wares. Immediately, behind showcases gorgeous with precious stones or bright with silver, platinum and gold, forty resplendent clerks stood at attention. Their morning coats were impeccable, lacking the slightest suspicion of a wrinkle, and in the left lapel of each was a pink carnation, as fresh and perfect as though it had grown there.

The majority of the book is set in a small town in the California desert, where the buyer of the pearls has a ranch. Charlie and Bob Eden, Alexander's son, travel to the ranch. When they arrive, suspicious circumstances lead Charlie to convince the buyer that the pearls will be arriving at a later date, even though he has them with him. Shortly after that, Charlie and Bob discover evidence that points to a murder, but can find no body.

At this point, we are about one third of the way into the mystery. The story gets even more complex, and the book is a great read. There are many interesting supporting characters, including a local newspaperman and a young woman who scouts for movie locations.

Racism rears its ugly head, as is common in many books written at the time. Charlie and other Chinese characters in the book are treated with a lack of respect and outright hostility. However, the author depicts Charlie Chan as an intelligent and insightful detective, well-known and respected even outside of Hawaii.

I have only read one other mystery in this series, the first one. Charlie is more central in this novel. In the first novel, The House Without a Key, Charlie does not show up until half way through and the story of the Winterslip family is more prominent than the detecting. My review of the first novel is here.

This book is also submitted for the Vintage Mystery Challenge (Dangerous Beasts: a book with an animal in the title).