The House Without a Key
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The House Without a Key is a novel that was written in 1925 by Earl Derr Biggers. It is the first of the Charlie Chan mysteries written by Biggers.
It deals with the murder of a former member of Boston society, whose sister and nephew have come to try to take home. The nephew, John Quincy Winterslip, soon falls under the spell of the islands himself, and decides to stay.
The novel is remarkable in two aspects. First of all, although Chan is ostensibly the detective, his role in the book is fairly small. He does figure out the solution to the case, but it is at the same time as Winterslip, and it is the Bostonian who has the honor of collaring the murderer.
Secondly, the novel's portrayal of the Chinese, specifically Charlie Chan, is amazingly forward-looking for its era. The Bostonians find it hard to accept a Chinese detective on the case, but the locals know him by reputation and show him great respect. Some of the descriptions, to be sure, do evince some of the stereotypes of the day. But on the whole, Chan is portrayed sympathetically, as an equal to the whites that surround him.
The novel is perhaps the best-written of the entire series, and is very well-crafted -- some believe it to be among the better novels written in the United States. Its solution is nearly identical with that used in the final Perry Mason novel by Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Postponed Murder (1970).
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