Biggers, Earl Derr: Charlie Chan Omnibus. v6. 15 Sep 2014
 

An omnibus edition of the "Charlies Chan" detective stories of Earl Derr Biggers. This volume contains the following books:

1. The House Without a Key
2. The Chinese Parrot
3. Behind that Curtain
4. The Black Camel
5. Charlie Chan Carries On
6. Keeper of the Keys

If your view of Charlie Chan comes from the dozens of very bad, semi-comic movies made in the 1940s and 50s, then read these books and you're in for a pleasant surprise. The books have extremely well-crafted plots ("The Chinese Parrot" is my personal favourite) and are well worth reading.

Chan, the first Chinese detective in literature, was modeled after Chang Apana, a real-life police detective in Honolulu.

Enjoy!

Please note that:

• This book is not in the public domain in the US. Please do not download it if you are in the US.
• The book may or may not have had random editorial changes made at the whim of the uploader. If this concerns you, you'd better not download it!

EDIT: 11 Jun 07

The 5th book in the series, "Charlie Chan Carries On", has now appeared on PG Australia so, as promised, I've added it to the omnibus and uploaded v2. Although it says it's an "Abridged Edition" I think, looking at the file size, that the abridgement is minor. Obviously if an "unabridged" version appears, I'll replace it.

EDIT: 21 May 08

Recreated the omnibus with much improved layout and formatting, to fix a problem with poor layout and incorrect paragraph breaks. Uploaded v3.

EDIT: 22 May 09

MR user "Bones" has been kind enough to supply an unabridged version of "Charlie Chan Carries On" so, as promised, here's a new version of the omnibus with the unabridged version of that book. The new version is about a third longer than the previous, abridged, version of the book. Uploaded v4.

EDIT: 3 Mar 10

Cleaned up the HTML code. Minor formatting improvements. Added a new cover image. Uploaded v5.

EDIT: 15 Sep 14

Thoroughly proof-read. Straight quotes changed to curly quotes. Many errors corrected. I would now regard this as a finished product, so please let me know if you spot any remaining errors. Uploaded v6.


Previous download count: 1809

Recreated the omnibus with much improved layout and formatting, to fix a problem with poor layout and incorrect paragraph breaks. Now a proper MobiPocket book with library information, working navigation links, and a cover image. Uploaded v3.

MR user "Bones" has been kind enough to supply an unabridged version of "Charlie Chan Carries On" so, as promised, here's a new version of the omnibus with the unabridged version of that book. The new version is about a third longer than the previous, abridged, version of the book. Uploaded v4.

The Chinese Parrot formatting?
 

Hi HarryT,

Thanks very much for creating this ebook. I just finished reading "The House Without a Key". I enjoyed it a lot. The characterizations and plot were interesting and the setting was evocative.

edit:
Also, please ignore the title of this post. I was originally going to ask about the formatting of "The Chinese Parrot" because the first time I opened it, all of the text was centered. I just looked again and now it is left-justified. So there must have been a little glitch on my Kindle. And you can't change the title of a post after it's been submitted! :o

Regards,
R.L.

Cleaned up the HTML code. Minor formatting improvements. Added a new cover image. Uploaded v5.

:thanks: !

Thanks Harry. My memory of Charlie Chan is seeing him on the television, when I was a lad.

Bri

Thanks so much.

:thanks: :thanks: :thanks: ! ! !

By the way, Harry, that other copy of The House Without a Key I tried to read was from The Internet Archive, not Amazon as I erroneously told you via email. It was perhaps the worst formatted book I've ever seen in my life; as if someone had simply scanned the entire book using OCR software and didn't bother to check at all for errors. There were mistakes and extraneous characters on every page! I had to give it up. It was painful to try to read. Your Omnibus edition is such as welcome breath of fresh air. There's no comparison. Thanks again, Harry, for all your hard work! :)

Yes, that's what you get at Internet Archive: PDF page scans, and an ePub which is a raw OCR of those pages. It's the PDF which is the thing of value - they are my main source of originals for proof-reading my books against.

Thoroughly proof-read. Straight quotes changed to curly quotes. Many errors corrected. I would now regard this as a finished product, so please let me know if you spot any remaining errors. Uploaded v6.