Charlie Chan, the Honolulu-based Chinese detective, is visiting rural California when he is invited as to stay at a house with four ex-husbands of the world-famous soprano Ellen Landini. Most of the break-ups weren’t particularly clean, so clearly sparks start to fly when Ellen herself shows up to the party. Oh, and a couple of bullets start to fly as well and soon Ellen lies dead…

Charlie finds his work cut out trying to sift the alibis and motivations of the various houseguests, with the assistance of the local sheriff. But there are a lot of secrets that are being kept and lies being told. And one character in particular just isn’t being helpful…

The only Charlie Chan story not to be filmed, and the first one that I’ve read, so let’s address the elephant in the room – the breaking of Knox’s rule 5.

It doesn’t break it, really, if you know what Know is actually getting at by “no Chinaman”. In fact Biggers does mention this, with Charlie mentioning the term is an insult to people from China, and while he tolerates it from the uninformed, it is used once here as a direct insult to him. You could easily see his slightly stilted English and quoting various homilies as racist, but if you do, then you could just as easily point the finger at Christie and picking on Belgians. I know that’s a trite comparison – the stereotypical mysterious Chinese character had been around for a good while before this book, but based on the characterisation of Chan in this book, it would seem that Biggers is trying to address this.

And he’d be doing a pretty good job if it wasn’t for the other Chinese character in the book, Ah Sing, who’s dialogue is full-on “me velly solly” dialect. I know there’s a point to this, as a contrast to Chan, but crikey, it’s hard to read in places. And I’m not entirely sure why they keep letting him refuse to answer their questions…

So, let’s put that to one side and think about the rest of the book. All in all, it’s pretty good. I wasn’t sure what to expect but it’s a proper mystery with clues and deductions and a solution that isn’t as straightforward as you might think. I thought the middle third did drag, as the suspects aren’t desperately interesting for the most part, but my interest picked up as the mystery started to come together and the ending is very effective.

All in all, I enjoyed this enough to go and read another in the series – any recommendations?

NB Oh, avoid the Wikipedia page on Chan, as it does contain a spoiler for this one in the first paragraph.