Fifty Candles (Expanded Edition)

Fifty Candles -- first published just two years after a 1919 vacation in Hawaii -- shows how Hawaii, China, and murder had already begun to come together in Biggers' imagination; eventually he would create the character Charlie Chan.

The story starts in a courthouse in Honolulu, moves to China, then to fog-shrouded San Francisco. Many of the elements used in the Charlie Chan series are present: Chinese characters (both sinister and sympathetic), the Honolulu legal system, a shrewd detective...