Le Cafe Singe Bleu Serving generous portions of history and mystery from our monthly menu Volume 1, Issue 2: February 1, 2003

BOOK REVIEWS

Charlie Chan Returns Dennis Lynds 1974 Detective: Charlie Chan Location: Manhattan Time: late 1940s Should you read this book? Non

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Reviewed by Dot Emm The Young Man There is no young man. The Young Woman There is no young woman. The Victim Victor Cosmo - an influential philanthropist, he likes to use people. The Suspects Lorraine McCall - an actress, she started her career in films that she's ashamed of now Lalique - an artist and poseur, he signs his name to other people's works Jefferey Lowman - he has political aspirations, and no one is going to stand in his way Winston Cleaver - a gay writer of mystery stories Natalie - Cosmo's 'associate', she's really his mistress. She knows he leaves her nothing in his will. The Man With the Acne Scarred Face - handy with hand grenades and machine pistols. The Police Charlie Chan - he stays at the Waldorf-Astoria and practices Tai Chi Ch'uan Jimmy Chan - number three son, he is now a police detective in Manhattan Norbitz - Jimmy's partner. Opening lines That morning, the heat wave that had stifled New York in an oven for a week broke. All through Manhattan air conditioners were switched off, and Consolidated Edison executives breathed easier as the threat of a power crisis ended for now. By 10:00 a.m. the pace of the city quickened in the clear, bright morning. Across the East River in Long Island City, where the heat was alwas worse among the endless, crowded residential blocks, streams of housewives walked the busy streets with lighter steps. At a tenth-floor window in a typical middle-class, high-rise apartment building, a man in a white shirt leaned on the sill, lazily enjoying the change in the weather. At an hour when few men were at home in Long Island City, the man in the white shirt remained at his window for some time. His shirt still open at the collar, cuffs unbuttoned, he seemed in no hurry - a man lounging at home on a summer morning. He had an ordinary face - craggy and angular and pitted with old acne scars - a homely face, but quiet and likeable enough. In his mid-forties, he could have been one of the thousands of office workers, mechanics, or minor executives all through the business firms of the city. Victor Cosmo, noted philanthropist, has made a lot of enemies in his time. But when he receives a tape recorded message: ''Dear-Victor-for-all-the-pain-which-you-have-delighted-in-inflicting-upon-others-you-are-going-to-die-it-will-be-very-soon-wait-to-die-Victor,'' he decides that there are only four people in the world that would hate him enough to murder him. So he invites them to dinner at his penthouse. He also invites Charlie Chan, who is vacationing in New York City. ''..I have thought it over in great detail. There are only you four with enough motive or hate to kill me. I have helped greatly to make each of you a success, I can ruin each of you just as easily, and I have outlived my usefulness to you.'' It's an unpleasant dinner party. Cosmo tells each of the guests exactly what he has on them, and he does this in front of two witnesses (Inspector Chan and his 'associate' Natalie). ''I have recorded my transactions with each of you in a ledger. Should its contents be made public, everyone of you would be ruined before nightfall - finished!'' He also has kind words to say about Charlie Chan. ''You know his reputation, you know that it would be impossible to evade him.'' Cosmo thinks this will make him safe, but of course it doesn't. Someone who was not at the dinner party, the man we meet at the beginning with the acne-scarred face and the two hand grenades, arranges his death that very night. Two hand-grenades....and that second hand grenade is reserved for Charlie Chan.... After writing four Charlie Chan novellas for Charlie Chan's Detective Magazine under the pseudonym Robert Hart Davis, prolific author Dennis Lynds was given the chance to write a full length novel under his own name. However good the novellas were (and recently reprinted The Temple of the Golden Horde is an excellent pastiche) Charlie Chan Returns is a disappointment. It is the novelization of a screenplay by Ed Spielman and Howard Friedlander (two men who wrote for the Kung Fu television series among other accomplishments). However, that screenplay never made it to production. (Charlie Chan Returns aka Happiness Is A Warm Clue starring Ross Martin (filmed 1971, shelved, released in Europe 1973, released in the USA 1979, has an entirely different plot and was written by Gene R. Kearney and Simon Last). The problem with Charlie Chan Returns is that its plot is simply not a 'Charlie Chan' type of plot. The typical 'Charlie Chan' features a young man, involved in a mystery in some way, who falls in love with a woman, and Charlie Chan spends almost as much time smoothing the course of true love as he does investigating the mystery. Readers care about this couple, and want to see them 'live happily every after' just as much as they want to see Charlie Chan solve the case. It's a formula but it's a formula that worked. Charlie Chan Returns abandons that formula, only to replace it with another formula - that of the hard-boiled detective novel. Victor Cosmo is an unpleasant character and nobody is sorry that he's dead, least of all the reader. The problem is, none of the suspects are the least bit sympathetic, either. And since there is no likeable character who is wrongly suspected, there's no urgency to discover the murderer. We simply don't care whodunit. Charlie Chan is the main character, and Manhattan police detective Jimmy assists him (saving his life at one point) but we are never shown the inside of Charlie's mind, let alone Jimmy's. Earl Derr Biggers' Charlie Chan often thought about his place as a Chinese in America, and the place of his children. No such thoughts seem to occur to him this time around, nor to Jimmy. They are simply cardboard characters. Dennis Lynds is most famous for his books about Private Eye Dan Fortune, written under the pseudonym Michael Collins. He also wrote a few Shadow novels, under the pseudonym Maxwell Grant. And that's what Charlie Chan Returns really is, a piece of pulp fiction with a Chinese guy walking around spouting aphorisms like Charlie Chan, but with none of Charlie's charm or personality. Samples of his prose: A second blast from the shotgun ripped a gaping hole in his chest and in the studio bed at the same time, and he lay as if pinned to the bloody bed like a red blot. ''I'm getting your attention, slob,'' Jimmy said calmly, and slapped the man's face with his free hand. ''You see me yet, slob? Am I getting through?'' Without breaking step or hesitating, the man pressed the trigger of the gun, and the burst of bullets exploded in the gaudy club. The machine pistol spat its stream of death straight at Charlie Chan. Wildside Press is reprinting Lynds' Charlie Chan in The Temple of the Golden Horde, and it is a vast improvement. Read A Proverb For Every Occasion Visit Charlie Chan's Hawaii This review uploaded January 25, 2003.

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