Welcome to Issue 2
by Caroline Miniscule
In this issue of Le Cafe Singe Bleu we are proud to present many articles on Charlie Chan. When people think of Chan today, they think of the movies starring Warner Oland, Sidney Toler, and (very rarely) Roland Winters. The original Charlie Chan, as created in the books by Earl Derr Biggers, is all but forgotten. We hope to remedy that in this issue.
First, we review all six Charlie Chan books in our Book Reviews section. We also review the 1974 full length pastiche Charlie Chan Returns and two reprinted novellas The Temple of the Golden Horde and The Pawns of Death. Second, we present two feature articles: 'A Proverb for Every Occasion: The Wit of Charlie Chan' which has been compiled from the six Biggers books and part one of 'Charlie Chan's Hawaii' which uses as its starting point The House Without A Key to delve into the history of Hawaii, 1925.
We also present a new feature this month, called Dragnet. This will be an ongoing and, indeed, never ending feature. The purpose is to collect together all mentions of a detective character or mystery author that take place in either fiction or non-fiction. We start this issue with Ernest Hemingway speaking of Maria Belloc Lowndes and Georges Simenon, and John Philips Marquand and John Dickson Carr on Charlie Chan.
For our book reviews, we review the first installment in the very popular Amelia Peabody series, The Crocodile on the Sandbank, and another book which takes in Egypt, only 2000 years earlier, Agatha Christie's Death Comes As The End. In The Chinese Parrot Earl Derr Biggers mentions the famous Wild West lawman Bill Tighlman, so we review The Arabian Pearl where the lawman actually has a role to play. We review the second in the Asey Mayo mystery series, Death Lights A Candle, and a classic children's book The Bobbsey Twins of Lakeport.
Dragnet 2003 made its debut on February 2, 2003, and we provide thoughts on this 'reconceptualization.' We also provide transcribed scripts for three classic radio programs.
Please enjoy, and thank you so much.
If you have any comments or questions, please email Le Cafe Singe Bleu.
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