Fifty Candles

Fifty Candles is one of Earl Derr Biggers' earlier works and predates the Charlie Chan novels by four years. Nonetheless, it contains many of the tropes and imagery that would become commonplace in the Charlie Chan series. It starts out, for example, in Hawaii--just two years after Biggers had vacationed there at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, which would become a setting for some of the Chan mysteries. It also experiments with the mystery puzzle setup in classical form, which will come to dominate the latter novels. But it is the pointed imagery and even phrases the pop out. For example, the beautiful woman making an entry by a stairway; the elegant young sophisticated man who pursues her; the reference to Honolulu and Hawaii as a "melting show more pot" of races and ethnicities; and the defense of the Chinese and their development in his fiction as more than mere backdrops.

It's not all that mysterious. But the atmosphere of a foggy San Francisco night in the waning days of its being an opening to the treaty ports of the Far East still lingers as a worthwhile treat. A short read of less than two hours, Fifty Candles is the prototype for Biggers' later mystery novels. show less