The House without a Key / Earl Derr Biggers

The House without a Key
by Earl Derr Biggers
Charlie Chan (1)

mystery

copyright 1925
read in June 2013

rated 7/10: well worth reading

Goodness me ! a Charlie Chan omnibus ! I've seen five minutes of a Charlie Chan movie. And enjoyed the Chinese detective who has helped Maxwell Smart. But I have never read nor watched a complete Chan story...

Until now !

Is it just my era, or is Charlie Chan still an iconic figure in film and literature ? No matter.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book :-)

I didn't know what to expect. The introduction almost put me off, so I skipped most of it. The story -- is a lot of fun.

The characters are straight from Wodehouse via Boston. The action is slow, the humor is light and pleasant. Best of all -- the mystery makes sense.

Sometime in the past I must have read a mystery novel. I'm sure that I've watched more than one mystery on TV. The one thing in common is, that the resolution of the mystery is a riddle wrapped in an enigma. As far as I can tell, the final and definitive clue is only provided as the detective states the solution.

"What no-one knew," says the detective, on the last page but one, "Is that Mr X is the victim's second cousin twice removed, that he was in the conservatory just after midnight -- despite all prior evidence to the contrary -- and that the innocuous flower which no-one has, till now, mentioned, is the only known breeding ground for the deadly black-throated spider ! Which leads to... the inevitable conclusion... that the murder was really suicide !" Oh yeah ?!

Charlie Chan puts forward a whole lot of clues. These lead to a string of suspects. Who are eliminated -- as suspects, that is, -- one by one. The final clue is not obvious. But it is presented early enough for the reader to -- with luck ! -- almost beat the hero to the correct conclusion. Or, at least, to keep up as all is revealed.

Oh, and "hero" ? Charlie Chan is not the hero. The hero is one of the Wodehouse characters... Chan solves the case and gathers conclusive evidence. The hero has a leap of strong intuition, just in time to prevent the villain from escaping. And the hero gets the girl.

Chan is essential to the story. Yet not -- yet ? -- the central character.

My book is three novels in an omnibus. I look forward to seeing how Chan develops in the next two stories.

So far... so good.

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Problems ? Solved

Martian Time-Slip / Philip K. Dick

Martian Time-Slip
by Philip K. Dick
science fiction

copyright 1964
read in May 2013

rated 6/10: read to pass the time

This is the second "great novel" in a massive volume of PKD stories. (PKD stories ?! Well, it doesn't sound quite right to say, Dick stories...)

Stigmata was confusing but fun... I think. Time-Slip is not quite as confusing, not quite as much fun.

Life on Mars has, it seems, improved slightly. Stigmata offered a hopeless life of scrabbling to survive, of using drugs to escape the reality of a harsh, dry, dusty environment. Time-Slip offers a harsh world where all the minor evils of Earth have been transferred to the new planet.

Still, the hero gets on with his life.

It's all a bit... everyday. Helicopters rather than cars. Water via canals rather than by pipe. An indigenous population forced to the lowest rung of society as they gradually die out. And mental illness as the norm. Just minor changes from life as we know it.

The science in most SF is "hard" science. In the days when psychiatry was a new but developing science, Dick used it as the central theme for his story. A "soft"science but good science fiction !

And in those days before science pooh-poohed the idea, Dick allows the mind to control reality.

Okay, it takes a while to get there, but I think that's what happened...

After spending most of the book getting there, we finally discover that the autistic boy is able -- through the power of his mind -- to control reality. And to control time. The discovery was a bit abrupt, perhaps I just missed some of the clues along the way.

The bad guy tries to change time and gains nothing. The hero gets a mystic token which he never uses, he learns some valuable personal lessons and survives, otherwise unscathed. The autistic boy pops up inexplicably so that we know that he, at least, has achieved what he wanted from his mental abilities.

A confusing ending, but happy.

A readable book, but not great.

I enjoyed it, but will probably not read the remaining three "great novels" in this PKD omnibus.

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Problems ? Solved