Tue 9 Feb 2021
An Archived Review by Maryell Cleary: EARL DERR BIGGERS – The Chinese Parrot.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[7] Comments
EARL DERR BIGGERS – The Chinese Parrot. Charlie Chan #2. Bobbs Merrill, hardcover, 1926. Pocket #168, paperback; 1st printing, July 1942. Reprinted many times since, in both hardcover and paperback.
The Charlie Chan stories are classics of detective fiction. However, classics of the past are not always to be read with enjoyment in the present. I reread The Chinese Parrot to see how well it holds its own with modern mysteries. My verdict is that it does so very well. The many details which are of its own time add to the interest rather than detracting from it: the use of the telegraph, the “flivvers,” the ubiquitous Chinese “boys” as servants.
The story is one of murder surmised rather than known, an atmosphere of something wrong rather than a crime to be unraveled. It progresses as theory after theory put forth by young Bob Eden is proven wrong by Charlie Chan’s detective work.
It is most unbelievable when Bob continues to bend to Charlie’s plea not to hand over the pearl necklace which he is supposed to deliver. Evidence of anything wrong at the Madden ranch is slim indeed; I have trouble believing that any impatient young man would procrastinate so on only the word of a Hawaiian detective he has never known before. However, it is necessary to the story that he delay, so delay he does.
And delay at last brings the story to a smashing conclusion. Dated? Yes, of course, Outdated? Never.
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: It has been a while since one of Maryell’s reviews has appeared on this blog. Since that is so, let me reprint the following, which I wrote as a followup note to the first of her reviews here. This is from November 19, 2009:
Maryell Cleary, who died in 2003, was an ordained minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church as well a voluminous reader and collector of detective fiction. I met her once while she was taking a trip by car through New England. She stopped here to look at my collection and to go through my duplicates, and of course we spent a long, wonderful afternoon talking about each of our favorite characters and authors.
Maryell was especially fond of mysteries in the Golden Age tradition. In fact, she had a letter in the same issue of The Poisoned Pen as the one above in which she protested mildly that fans of private eye novels had taken over the pages of recent issues! More coverage, she requested, of authors like Martha Grimes, Ruth Rendell, Patricia Moyes, Charlotte MacLeod, Robert Barnard, Marian Babson, Dorothy Simpson and P. D. James.
To that end she also wrote many reviews and articles herself for the mystery fanzines of 20 and 30 years ago, including the still late lamented Poisoned Pen, published for many years by Jeff Meyerson. I’ve conferred with Jeff, and we both agree that she would have liked her reviews to go on after her. They will appear here on a regular basis for some time to come — she wrote a lot of them!
February 9th, 2021 at 11:30 pm
Three things make this my favorite of the Chan novels. Charlie involved from the start of the book and central to most of the action is one.
Charlie is written in such a way it feels as if he is having fun playing at being the eccentric homicidal cook and that Biggers and Charlie are making wry comments on the racist expectations of everyone accepting that role playing.
I don’t go so far as to claim that is what Biggers intended, but it certainly reads that way.
Finally this one reads more like a Charlie Chan movie than any other book in the series. It’s hard not to see Oland as Charlie in the antics and you have expect Lee to show up.
CARRIES ON may be my favorite as a puzzler, but for sheer entertainment this is the winner. It also has Charlie’s best aphorism about a woman marrying a man who owns a jewelry store.
February 9th, 2021 at 11:44 pm
I’m fairly sure I can find my copy of the Pocket paperback. Maryell’s review had me thinking about it. Now after reading your comment, David, upstairs I go to get it!
February 9th, 2021 at 11:38 pm
The allusions to the reviewer’s background is touching. She happens to be passing through the state on a road trip, and stops to chat with a fellow book collector, and they spend the afternoon just talking about favorite books. Wonderful!
As for revisionism and presentism: I myself can’t fathom people who ‘take offense at history’; who leap to condemn it. Warts or not, history is all we have. Lack of respect for the past leads to Stalinist-style whitewashing.
February 9th, 2021 at 11:46 pm
I still remember her visit. Being able to talk to other collectors in person always makes my day. That’s why I do this blog, though that probably goes without saying. It’s the next best thing!
February 9th, 2021 at 11:48 pm
Lazy, sometimes, and this is one of them I cannot get enough of you.
February 9th, 2021 at 11:56 pm
This was the first Chan novel I read and probably my favorite of the bunch. I remember buying it out of a book vending machine (really!) in a hotel in Austin, Texas, about 1964. The Paperback Library edition shown here:
http://bookscans.com/Publishers/pblib/images/pblib52-228.jpg
February 10th, 2021 at 1:15 pm
I like this one a lot too, though truthfully I like them all. As opposed (as I’ve said often before) to the films, which I dislike. The setting on this one is part of its charm.