Review: The House Without a Key

The House Without a Key by Earl Derr Biggers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Charlie Chan, who makes his first appearance in this book, is a controversial figure. Some regard him as a pioneering positive representation of an Asian character in an age where the "Yellow Peril" was a more dominant trope, while others consider him an instance of a "model minority". Most of the discussion centres on the films, which were better known than the books, but the book series came first and set the tone.

I'm not qualified to weigh in on that debate, but I can tell you that this book is notably racist, even if Chan is seen as capable and treated with respect and friendship by the actual main character (a Boston Brahmin).

Yes, he's a secondary character in the first book in his own series, and doesn't arrive until a quarter of the way in. The viewpoint mainly follows John Quincy Winterslip, a 29-year-old Bostonian from a proud old family (referred to repeatedly in narration as "the boy" and almost always addressed by both his forenames), who has come to Hawaii on a mission from the family: to get his Aunt Minerva, who has been lingering there for some time, to come home. There are two different "strains" in the Winterslips, the Puritan and the "gypsy," and at first John Quincy seems all Puritan; but as the tropical setting works on him, he discovers that he isn't just the buttoned-up fellow that everyone thinks he is, and as he has various adventures connected with the case, he discovers that the "gypsy" strain is present in him after all.

The murder being investigated is of John Quincy's cousin Dan, a wealthy man who made his money by dark means (including, it turns out, "blackbirding," which is another word for slave trading, back in the 1880s, which is 30 years prior to the book's events). There are plenty of people with motives to kill him, but one clue after another leads to a dead end. The final resolution comes with a bit of help from coincidence; John Quincy happens to spot a watch that they've been looking for as a key clue on the wrist of the driver of a cab that he's being kidnapped into, which is entirely coincidental as it turns out, and this, along with some other information that is available to the characters but not yet to the reader, leads to a break in the case. (The fact that the watch was a clue at all is also down to a coincidence.)

So the resolution is a little bit of a cheat, although the process of chasing down the clues is interesting, varied, and an enjoyable ride. The evocation of Hawaii shortly before World War I - not yet a US state, not long a US territory, not yet thought of as part of America even by some Americans who know it technically is - is strong and sometimes lyrical, and the character arc of John Quincy, which is honestly the main plot to which the mystery forms almost a background, is well handled. All these aspects get the book four stars from me, though that's dropped firmly down to the Bronze tier of my annual list by the racism.

As well as the racism of the characters ("But he's a Chinaman!" Aunt Minerva exclaims, when told that Chan will be investigating), the narrative itself has racist undertones: the "Jap" servant (always called that), the "half-savage" native Hawaiian "member of a vanishing race," and the three different varieties of broken English that they and Chan speak, for example. People of different races getting on the trolley that John Quincy rides between Waikiki and Honolulu are referred to as "immigration problems". Yes, sure, the book was "of its time," blah blah. There are other books of the time that aren't this racist, and this one didn't need to be in order to do the things it does well. It could have represented the racism of the time without participating in it, but it did not.

If you can set that aside - and I fully understand if you can't - it has other strengths which make it an interesting read.

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