The Black Camel (Grosset & Dunlap, 1929) by Earl Derr Biggers is the fourth of six mysteries Biggers wrote about Honolulu police officer Charlie Chan, a Chinese-American with eleven Americanized children. Inspector Chan’s appearances in a series of not particularly well done movies are better known, which is unfortunate, because Chan on the written page is intelligent, efficient, and personable.
Chan’s skills are called into play when Shelah Fane, a Hollywood actress on the crest of her fame, is killed in the gazebo of the house she is renting near the Waikiki Beach. Her dinner guests are taking a quick swim or wandering the grounds and few of them have alibis. They include Jim Bradshaw of the local Tourist Bureau, her costars in her newest film she is in Hawaii to promote, a former Hollywood actress now married to a sugar plantation owner in the islands, her secretary, and Tarneverro, a fortune teller that Shelah consults for every decision. Alan Jaynes, whom Shelah met on the ship, was also invited but decided to leave early when she declined his marriage proposal.
Shelah had confided to one of these people earlier in the day that she had been present during the murder of actor Dennis Mayo in Los Angeles three years previously, a case that the police had been unable to close. Shelah had never come forward with her evidence and the knowledge weighs heavily on her. When Chan learns this, he assumes that her secret is the reason for her murder and that her killer was also responsible for the death of Mayo. When he solves one case, he will solve the other.
Not at all what I expected, this book is a competent police procedural of its time. It includes such tropes as the broken watch which is assumed to show the time of the murder and an uncannily accurate fortune teller complete with crystal ball. The descriptions of Hawaii are fit for a travel brochure, and the characters are as over the top as one would expect for the film industry.
I was reminded of Chief Inspector C. D. Sloan in Catherine Aird’s books when Chan’s wry comments revealed the officer sent to assist him in the investigation is as inept as Constable Crosby is in the Calleshire Chronicles. Officer Kashimo is plainly a great trial to his colleagues, just as Constable Crosby will be fifty years later. He ruins footprints at the scene of the crime and he is eager to search the house before anyone knows what they are looking for. A surprisingly easy read despite its 354 pages, the writing flows smoothly with few dated references. Recommended!