WHITHER GOEST Charlie Chan?

For the fourth entry in the series, I found a place where Charlie Chan had never been--and sent him there.

Charlie Chan traveled far and wide in the original six novels by Earl Derr Biggers and the forty-plus films featuring Honolulu's most famous fictional detective. While Biggers kept Charlie in Hawaii and California, Hollywood was happy to send him around the world, including destinations such as: San Francisco, New York City, London, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Panama, Egypt, and China.

A Second encounter with snow for Charlie Chan

Readers of the sixth and final Biggers Chan novel, Keeper of the Keys, know that Charlie dwells on his first glimpse of snow up close in the book--he's in the Lake Tahoe region on the California–Nevada border. I've wondered why he never took a trip to the peak of one of Hawaii's sometimes-snow-covered summits, but he must've been too busy. No matter. He's on his way to one of the snowier places in the country.

As I've said (or written) elsewhere, I had hoped that launching the new Charlie Chan Returns series with Death, I Said in 2023 would give Chan fans a kind of continuation of the Biggers's novels---a respectful continuation of the original author's timeline. Part of that effort has been to take Charlie where Biggers did, have the detective behave in characteristic fashion, and also to have Chan extend himself a bit.

CHARLIE CHan is off again

Biggers was fond of San Francisco and other parts of California and that affection shows in his Chan works. I played it safe in my first effort, then branched out with The Tangled String--sending Charlie and the whole Chan family to Boston. Then, back to San Francisco for Beyond Murder.

For the as-yet-untitled fourth entry in the new Charlie Chan series, I wanted to do something a little different. So many of Charlie's adventures over the last century have taken place in major cities, it seemed warranted to give him a rural experience--a wilderness adventure, perhaps.

Next stop: Big moose, NY

For reasons that will be revealed in the forthcoming book's first chapter, Charlie Chan is about to find himself en route to a remote destination in the Adirondack Mountains of New York (the state, not the city). The Adirondacks have been a storied destination for the rich and famous for decades by the time Charlie arrives (in the 1930s, of course), and he will very shortly have his hands full.

The fourth book in the series will be available soon, thanks to the continuing support of Chan fans old and new, and much of the action in it takes place in the hamlet of Big Moose, New York. The fictional version of pre-war Big Moose provides a setting unlike any other Charlie has encountered before, and he will take on some unique challenges on the way to the mystery's solution.