''The House Without a Key'' is a 1925 novel by

Earl Derr Biggers Earl Derr Biggers (August 26, 1884 – April 5, 1933) was an American novelist and playwright. His novels featuring the fictional Chinese American detective Charlie Chan were adapted into popular films made in the United States and China. Biogr ...

, the first of the

Charlie Chan Charlie Chan is a fictional Honolulu police detective created by author Earl Derr Biggers for a series of mystery novels. Biggers loosely based Chan on Hawaiian detective Chang Apana. The benevolent and heroic Chan was conceived as an alter ...

mysteries. Set in 1920s

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only state ...

, the novel acquaints the reader with the look and feel of the islands from the standpoint of both white and non-white inhabitants, describing social class structures and customs of the era.

Plot summary

The novel deals with the murder of a former member of

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

society who has lived in Hawaii for a number of years. The main character is the victim's nephew, a straitlaced young Bostonian bond trader, who came to the islands to try to convince his aunt Minerva, whose vacation has extended many months, to return to Boston. The nephew, John Quincy Winterslip, soon falls under the spell of the islands himself, meets an attractive young woman, breaks his engagement to his straitlaced Bostonian fiancee Agatha, and decides as the murder is being solved to move to San Francisco. In the interval, he is introduced to many levels of Hawaiian society and is of some assistance to Detective Charlie Chan in solving the mystery. The novel's denouement is nearly identical to that in the final

Perry Mason Perry Mason is a fictional character, an American criminal defense lawyer who is the main character in works of detective fiction written by Erle Stanley Gardner. Perry Mason features in 82 novels and 4 short stories, all of which involve a c ...

novel by

Erle Stanley Gardner Erle Stanley Gardner (July 17, 1889 – March 11, 1970) was an American lawyer and author. He is best known for the Perry Mason series of detective stories, but he wrote numerous other novels and shorter pieces and also a series of nonfiction b ...

, '' The Case of the Postponed Murder'' (1970).

Adaptations

It was adapted for film twice, as '' The House Without a Key'' in 1926 and as '' Charlie Chan's Greatest Case'' in 1933. In 1942 it was adapted for the stage by Jean Lee Latham, and played in Chicago. Another dramatisation by Hal Glatzer played at the Left Coast Crime Conference in Hawai'i in 2009.

Trivia

Charlie Chan does not speak his first word until page 82 (first paperback edition). The novel was written by Biggers at the Halekulani hotel on

Waikīkī Beach Waikiki (; haw, Waikīkī; ; also known as Waikiki Beach) is a neighborhood of Honolulu on the south shore of the island of Oahu in the U.S. state of Hawaii. Waikiki is most famous for Waikiki Beach, which is one of six beaches in the district ...

which features a restaurant named "House Without a Key".

References

External links

* * *
Charlie Chan, The Enduring Detective by Marv Lachman
{{DEFAULTSORT:House Without a Key, The 1925 American novels Charlie Chan novels American novels adapted into films Novels set in Hawaii Novels set in the 1920s Bobbs-Merrill Company books