Book Review: The Chinese Parrot

Title: The Chinese Parrot

That's what I physically have. Amazon isn't showing copies available online, although you can get one from this web site for an appropriate collector's price. For readers not willing to pay collectors' prices, there's a reprint:



Author: Earl Derr Biggers

Date: 1926

Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap

ISBN: none

Length: 316 pages

Quote: “Detective-Sergeant Chan, of the Honolulu police...Charlie left us to join the police force, and he’s made a fine record there.”

Charlie Chan was one of several fictional characters that were created to express Anglo-American good will toward People Different From Us. Smart, tough, funny, he solved mysteries “with the patience of his race,” helping to break down the stereotypes that had been based in real hate and fear while building up the more benign kind based in mere ignorance. He was very popular in the early twentieth century. (By the time I came along, a cartoon spin-off series was popular on television; I never watched the show but had a “Chan Clan” cartoon lunchbox decorated with scenes showing Charlie Chan’s ten children.) Before the movies, there were the novels, at first rather cheaply produced hardcover novels...and this is where it starts. Although the hardcover binding is not in very stable condition, what I have is a first edition of The Chinese Parrot, printed in 1926.

It’s a classic detective story. Much more than that I can’t say without spoiling the suspense, but I will say that although the psychology is dubious and the police procedure is at best long out of date, it’s a fun read.

Part of the fun is in Biggers’ attention to words. Charlie Chan does not enjoy clowning—“shuffling,” playing the stupid laborer who knows only a little pidgin English, although he does that in some scenes; he’s proud of his English vocabulary. At a period when silly “Confucius Say” jokes were in fashion (“Confucius say: one who sits on tack is better off!”), Detective-Sergeant Chan always had a real proverb, some even translated from “Kong Fu-Tse” (older transliteration style throughout). At the same time his English remains the sort of English we expect to hear real educated foreigners speak, with each word recognizable, but not necessarily used in the same way a native speaker might use it. Most of the time audiences were laughing with Charlie Chan (or just trying to solve mysteries with him) but then again, once or twice in each story, they got to smile at him.

For vintage movie watchers, another nice touch about the book is that it’s not as sexist as you might have expected. Of course the young woman is kept on the sidelines and referred to as a “girl,” but then the young man is likewise called a “boy,” throughout. At least “girl” Paula isn’t stupid, weak, or helpless; she’s a distraction for “boy” Bob from his adventure with Charlie Chan, because she has her own job to do; she does need to be rescued, once, along with an older woman and an older man who—oh, read the book, but suffice it to say it’s not because Paula faints at the mention of danger.

For protective parents, an additional nice touch is the low level of violence (by grown-up detective story standards). Fictional detectives can almost never solve one murder case until the murderer commits a second murder, but in this book...solve it yourself...there aren’t as many murders as we at first suspect, and the only murder we “see onstage” is that of the parrot.

To buy a copy here, send $5 per (reprint!) book plus $5 per package plus $1 per online payment to the appropriate address--$10 for this book only, $25 for the first four Charlie Chan novels, to Boxholder, P.O. Box 322, or $11 for this book or $26 for the first four to the e-mail address salolianigodagewi @ yahoo will send you.