Keeper of the Keys

Rating:
Summary: The Last of Chan
Review: In recent years it has become fashionable to decry Charlie Chan as distastefully stereotypical. At the time, however, the character was a marked departure from the Asian characters usually seen in fiction and film, both of which tended toward a "Fu Manchu" point of view. And it may startle detractors to learn that Chan was loosely based on an actual person: the legendary Chang Apana (1887-1933), a Hawaiian police officer of Chinese heritage who preferred a bullwhip to a gun and was noted for his fearlessness in dealing with criminals engaged in the opium trade.

In the hands of Biggers, the character emerges as a considerably more thoughtful, more formal personality--and one capable of unraveling elaborate crimes. Originally published in 1932, KEEPER OF THE KEYS would prove to be the sixth and last Chan novel by Earl Derr Biggers, who died a year later. And once more it finds Chan "on the mainland," this time at Lake Tahoe, where he has come to investigate the matter of a long-missing child... and finds himself embroiled in the murder of a famous opera singer.

In terms of plot, Biggers will never compete with the likes of Christie and Sayers; contemporary readers will also likely find themselves surpressing a smile over Bigger's assumptions in such matters as the nature of color blindness. Even so, and in spite of its occasionally dated quality, Biggers writes with a great deal of charm and dash--and the result is pure entertainment. Fans of the film series will also be interested in this novel's probable influence on such films as CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OPERA and CHARLIE CHAN IN RENO, but this aside Biggers also offers considerable food for thought, particularly in terms of the passage of time, changing codes of behavior, and differing ideas about what it means to be American.

Some of this is accidental: in the early 1930s Lake Tahoe was essentially a quiet summer resort, and the state of Nevada was less known for gambling than it was for the relaxed divorce laws that fueled the economy of Reno. Some of it, however, is very much intentional. Several characters in the novel, Chan among them, generally dismiss "scientific advances" re fingerprints and ballistics--but it will be precisely such advances that give Chan the final proof he requires to solve the murder.

Most particularly, however, the novel presents Chan as a man of Chinese birth who has deliberately Americanized himself as much as possible. And in KEEPER OF THE KEYS he confronts another Chinese, Ah Sing, who has refused assimilation and who clings with iron determination to the role of loyal, arrogant, and pidgin-speaking Chinese servant of inflexible caste and code. In doing so, Ah Sing effectively forces Chan to consider the degree to which Chan has abandoned his Asian heritage and the personal cost at which he has done so.

As in the other Chan novels, Biggers treats Chan and his other Asian characters with considerable respect; even so, and in spite of five previous Chan novels, he remains more than a little naive about both Asian culture and individuals. Consequently, the novel is also something of a cultural artifact, a glimpse into the way that "white America," even at its most enlightened, tended to regard Asians in this period. No less entertaining and readable for that, it is a solid conclusion to the series that created one of the most beloved fictional characters of the 20th Century.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer