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: 951
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