Customer Reviews

Behind That Curtain

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Don't let yourself be fooled into believing this is just a simple dinner party murder. There is infinitely more at stake. The victim? Sir Frederic Bruce, famous Scotland Yard Detective and on the trail of the most elusive woman you will ever meet. Is it possible to find the truth behind these lies, buried in the dust of fifteen year old crime that also must be solved? Count on Charlie Chan to find the answer!

The book's plot is not the one thing that drws you in, but Biggers writing as well, told with a mix of humor, drama and always with a familiarity that makes this an easy, quick and completely enjoyable read and leaves you craving more!

Set in San Francisco , this is the third of six books in the Charlie Chan series. The most interesting characters are a thoroughly liberated female lawyer and a famous British explorer. Chan's strong suit is his infinite patience and dogged attention to detail. He brings order out of chaos while operating in a simpler world. As a bonus we get not only a neat solution to the crimes but also two promising romances at the end. This is a story designed to leave the reader feeling good about the human condition.

The third Charlie Chan mystery (1928) lives up to the reputation of both Chan and his creator. This time Charlie pulls aside the curtain that conceals a mystery far in the past.

Charlie Chan is still trying to leave San Francisco after a vacation that turned into a job of detection. Once again he's kept from leaving by a case: the murder of Sir Frederick Bruce, ex-head of the Criminal Investigation Unit at Scotland Yard. Despite his retirement, Sir Frederick can't resist pursuing certain unsolved cases to their end. His end comes before his success, and it's Charlie Chan's fate to carry on.

How Charlie gets involved is a part of the deliciously complex plot that the reader can look forward to. Earl Derr Biggers has a genius for intricate plotting that doesn't lose the reader - and characters so witty, sinister, silly or charming, you observe them all with amused fascination.

The characters include a gorgeous woman lawyer obsessed with her career, a blustering police inspector who gets everything wrong, an unstoppable explorer who leaves behind a trail of dead camels and men in every remote patch of Earth he visits - and three women who have disappeared into the night over the last 15 years, starting with a young beauty in Peshawar. The search for these women has been the death of Sir Frederick.

As always, Charlie Chan is patient, modest, wise - and a fountain of delightfully flowery language. I'm moving on immediately to the next mystery in the series: The Black Camel..

Behind that Curtain, a newly reprinted edition of Earl Derr Biggers third Charlie Chan mystery brings the bygone era of San Francisco in the 1920s vividly back to life. I love these Charlie Chan stories that are so full of humor and portrayal of a time when life, and murder mysteries, were of a simple yet highly enjoyable style.

Our Hawaiian sleuth is on vacation for a week on the mainland, and is presented with a telegram that his wife has just delivered his 11th child and that he must make haste in his return as soon as possible. On his last evening in the big city, he is invited to a social dinner at the request of Barry Kirk, a business man who Charlie had met during his stay. At this elegant event are also a Hollywood movie actress, a famous adventure explorer, and Sir Frederic Bruce, a retired head of Scotland Yard who was visiting following up on some research of an old case he was never able to solve in his career. In addition to the dinner, this group was also entertained with movies taken from the explorer's recent jaunt to Tibet. The conversation over dinner led to Sir Frederic informing the guests that many years ago, the most daunting case of his career occurred. The only unsolved crime that he was never able to let go in his mind, was that of a British woman on vacation with her husband in India that suddenly went missing, never to be found. In addition, two other women over the years had also gone missing in the same curious manner, one minute there, the next poof, just gone.

While the guests enjoy the films of Tibet, they hear a gunshot below, and the mystery begins with Sir Frederic Bruce being murdered in cold blood within Barry Kirk's living quarters beneath them. He is oddly found wearing a pair of Chinese Slippers, slippers that had also gone missing in India with the woman that had disappeared 15 years prior. Barry pleads with Charlie to stay and assist with the case instead of returning to Hawaii, trusting that if anyone can figure out the puzzle it would be his friend Charlie Chan. Our sly Chinese philosopher detective agrees to remain for a period of one week until all clues are gathered and a criminal is apprehended.

In a crazy Columbo-like style of crime solving, this fun mystery delivers many interesting characters, an ingenious plot with a few red herrings to keep you on your toes, and provides a few hours of light and easy detective entertainment. Charlie's method of "watchful waiting" and responses akin to that of Buddha will have you on the sofa turning pages with a smile on your face, and unable to stop until the phrase THE END arrives on the last page. The only word I can come up with for the Charlie Chan mysteries is "delightful". As Mikey used to say in the old Life cereal television commercials "Try it, you'll like it".

In this, the third of Earl Derr Biggers' six Charlie Chan novels, Charlie has just solved the case described in The Chinese Parrot and is in San Francisco, yearning to return to his wife and family in Hawaii. His wife is, in fact, expecting their eleventh child. But at a dinner party, Sir Frederic Bruce, who is writing his memoirs about a woman who went missing some 15 years earlier, and who talks about the case at the dinner party, is murdered. Charlie is encouraged to stay, but boards the boat for home.

There he overhears something which makes him deboard and return to the case. "Moment of gentle embarrassment for me," he tells his former hosts. "The traveler who said goodbye is back before he goes." And when the District Attorney asks Charlie if he's on leave of duty from his police job in Hawaii, Charlie responds despondently: "One which stretches out like an elastic." All of Charlie Chan's intelligence and humanity are fully developed by this third novel. Now the author, who began as a writer of popular fiction with a romantic boy-meets-girl bent, turns to learning about how to plot mysteries. Here in Behind That Curtain Biggers deals with a "case" that is almost two decades old, and he does so very successfully.

Biggers female characters are strong and interesting, as are his supporting male characters. In this book Biggers introduces Inspector Duff of Scotland Yard. Duff and Charlie become fast friends, and, due to reader demand at the time, Biggers brought Duff back in a subsequent novel. All in all, a satisfying novel in the Charlie Chan series.

"The moment has charm." -- Charlie Chan


Charlie Chan is in romantic San Francisco in Behind That Curtain. Earl Derr Biggers wrote in a style which lent itself to romance as well as mystery. Perhaps only M.M. Kaye blended the two as perfectly as Biggers. Once embarked on this Chan adventure, one feels the trade winds of Hawaii calling our detective back to Honolulu for the birth of his 11th child. Yet the romance of a misty San Francisco still filled with the orient beckon him to stay and solve just one more crime. Behind That Curtain has so much atmosphere it washes over the reader like a sudden rain shower. Fortunately, we are in the most lovely of 1920's cities, with cable cars and quaint bungalows for shelter. Dark passages and murder do exist here, however, and we can consider ourselves lucky that the elegant Chan has stayed over to guide us away from danger.

Bill Rankin is a reporter with the idea of bringing together the visiting sleuth from Honolulu and Scotland Yard's Sir Frederic Bruce. Their stories of crimes solved will make a good feature. But it is Frederic's regrets in connection to an unsolved murder, and the seemingly unrelated disappearance of Eve Durand from India nearly 15 years prior that haunt the conversation. Barry Kirk and the pretty young D.A. he's immediately smitten with, June Morrow, plead for Charlie to stay when Sir Frederic is murdered. There are as many suspects to ponder over as there are mysterious clues. But which is that elusive 'essential clue' so beloved by Scotland Yard?

Charlie wants none of it, and only once onboard the S.S. Maui, of the famous Matson line, does an overheard conversation in an adjoining cabin have the Chinaman rushing down the gangplank to join Barry and June. They must all contend with Captain Flannery, however, whose methods are as heavy-handed as Charlie's are subtle. Charlie discovers evidence of two other missing young women, and suspects a possible connection to the unsolved Hilary Galt murder. How does a world famous adventurer fit into the picture? Are the slippers the essential clue, or something else? In the end, it is of course our favorite detective from the Islands who realizes the clue has been there all along.

The mystery is as much fun as racing down Nob Hill in a 1920's roadster in search of a clue. There is an innocence to the romance between Barry and June borne of another time. Chan is at the top of his game here, both funny and wise. The final scenes hold both humor, and inevitably, as was Biggers' custom, a dash of the romantic. This Charlie Chan is great fun and has one of the most charming endings of any Biggers wrote. A must read for those who like their mysteries old-fashioned, and a bit on the romantic side.

I can't remember what possessed me to check out a crumbling Charlie Chan anthology I found at the local library, but I did. My only memory of Charlie Chan were the old movies from an unenlightened, old Hollywood. But I quickly found, as I read the first of the novels, The House Without A Key, that here was something bright and shiny that had been tossed into the scrap yard. I bought the rest, and since reading The Grey Parrot and The Black Camel, I realized not only is the Charlie Chan series bright and shiny, it is genuinely precious. And Behind That Curtain confirms that impression.

This is what you get with a Charlie Chan novel: High wit; a vivid picture of its locales--Hawaii and California so far into my reading; a vivid evocation of America in the mid to late 1920s--affluent, mobile, confident, in love with its reflection and wholly unaware of its shortcomings; a well-constructed mystery plot; principal characters who are slyly drawn; secondary characters who may seem to be stereotypical of Golden Age detective fiction but who playfully spin expectations; a literary interplay of theme, setting and action; and a wise author who seems to be more of our time than of his. Alas, he died in 1933, leaving only six novels.

In Behind the Curtain, Biggers even assigns himself a sly part as a young journalist, Bill Rankin, who goads Charlie Chan into delaying his departure from San Francisco to his home in Honolulu where his wife is delivering their eleventh child, in order to help solve a murder mystery. It is Rankin who suggests the title, too, a metaphoric curtain referencing the obscurity of a far off time and place. Charlie becomes involved, enjoying the company of young sophisticates and the high regard of Scotland Yard, while being routinely insulted by a bigoted local cop who represents the provincialism that persisted in a brave new world (and persists yet, when you think about it). One of the delights of this novel is a young female assistant district attorney who provokes a range of reactions to her gender-defying career. And as ever, there is Charlie Chan, a man who went from houseboy to educated career detective, whose language flows with the love of the poetry from which he learned English, who is comfortably balanced between modern and traditional cultures, much more so than the rest of America.

A word about editions: I don't know why Amazon does not carry the current Academy Chicago edition of this novel, but it is nowhere to be found in the system, even though Amazon does carry the Academy Chicago editions of all the other Charlie Chans. I recommend the Academy edition--fun cover art and a quality trade paperback product.

Another winner in the Charlie Chan series, although my least favorite of the three I've read so far.

Coming off his success in the Californian desert mystery, "The Chinese Parrot", Charlie is back in San Francisco awaiting the next ship to Honolulu, Hawaii so that he can re-unite with his very pregnant wife and 10 children. Unfortunately, fate has other plans for Charlie when he is called upon to investigate the shooting death of a retired Scotland Yard detective.

Charlie has to use every skill in his arsenal in order to solve the crime pronto and hussle back to Hawaii.

Actually, this book was a gift to my sister. But its a classic of course and am sure that this one will be good.

The 1920s and 1930s were the 'Golden Age' of pulp fiction. One of the most popular genres were the mysteries. And one of the most popular fictional characters was Charlie Chan, a Chinese-American detective and the creation of Earl Derr Bigggers. So popular were the Charlie Chan mysteries that Hollywood made many of them into movies. Now Academy Chicago Press has brought out new trade paperback editions for six these time-lost classics for a new and appreciative generation of readers in a numbered series featuring their original pulp paperback covers. Included in this impressive publishing project are: "The House Without A Key"; "The Chinese Parrot"; "Behind That Curtain"; "The Black Camel"; "Charlie Carries On"; and "Keeper Of The Keys". Although each title is available individually, community libraries would be well advised to obtain the entire six volume series for the benefit of their grateful patrons who appreciate well crafted mysteries by a pulp fiction mystery writer who was at the top of his game!