"Checkmate " That was the last word uttered to Charlie Chan and Prefect of Police Claude DeBevre by a dying reporter. The man had been murdered . . . stabbed to death and left to die in a vacant hotel room. It is the second murder in 24 hours at the Transcontinental Chess Tournament, and Charlie Chan has been summoned from a peaceful and long-deserved vacation to help solve the crime before international scandal ruins the tournament's good name Originally published in Charlie Chan's Mystery Magazine in 1974, this is the first book appearance of The Pawns of Death.

"Death is the black camel that kneels unbidden at every gate." This is what Charlie Chan tells the guests of the unfortunate Shelah Fane, a glamorous Hollywood movie star who has been murdered while on location beach side in Honolulu. Here the detective confronts his most perplexing case of his long and illustrious career. Chan is aided by a mysterious fortune teller named Tarneverro the Great. It appears that Miss Fane had summoned Tarneverro to Honolulu as she strongly believes in his mystical powers. A number of bystanders do not have alibis in this case, and it takes every bit of Chan's...

In the third installment of the Charlie Chan mysteries the diminutive Chinese detective who hails from Honolulu finds himself back in San Francisco after his incredible adventures in the California desert with the previous book, The Chinese Parrot. A former head of Scotland Yard comes to town hot on the trail of a 15-year-old murder, where the significant clue is a pair of Chinese slippers. There is also the mysterious disappearance of a series of women, one of whom the British inspector believes may be linked to his case. When the English sleuth is himself inexplicably murdered in a social...

In this 5th installment of the classic series of mysteries featuring Charlie Chan of the Honolulu Police, we meet Scotland Yard's Inspector Duff, first introduced in Behind That Curtain. Duff is pursuing a callous murderer on an around-the-world tour, and it is only when the ship is docked in Honolulu and Duff is gravely wounded, does Charlie Chan take on the case. This is decidedly unfortunate for the guilty party, because Chan has the culprit well in-hand before the ship makes its final stOut of Print in San Francisco.

Earl Biggers was the creator of the Chinese detective Charlie Chan. Biggers was an American novelist and playwright. He is remembered primarily for adaptations of his novels, especially those featuring Charlie Chan. The Agony Column was published in 1916. It was also published under the title Second Floor Mystery. The London Times had a second column called the Agony Column. This was similar to the personals in today's newspapers. Geoffrey West is an American in London. He is reading the Agony Column when a beautiful American girl sits near him reading the paper to her father. Geoffrey is...

In Biggers' final novel, Charlie Chan is invited to millionaire Dudley Ward's home in Lake Tahoe to try to find his missing son. However the murder of Dudley Ward's ex-wife, the soprano Ellen Landini, soon occupies his complete attention, and potential suspects abound. He examines the evidence but seems unable to persuade Ah Sing, the titular keeper of the keys, to break his loyal silence and give him the key to solving the mystery.

Behind That Curtain (1928) is the third novel in the Charlie Chan series of mystery novels by Earl Derr Biggers. It is set almost exclusively in California (as opposed to Chan's native Hawaii), and tells the story of the former head of Scotland Yard, a detective who is pursuing the long-cold trail of a murderer. Fifteen years ago, a London solicitor was killed in circumstances in which the only clue was a pair of Chinese slippers, which he apparently donned just before his death. Sir Frederic Bruce has been following the trail of the killer ever since. He has also been interested in what...