Other editions of book Keeper of the keys

In this last written adventure, the plot unfolds with an intriguing scenario. Wealthy and hospitible Dudley Ward gathers together Charlie Chan along with Ellen's three later husbands to his large house on Lake Tahoe. After hearing his former wife, Ellen Landini, may have been pregnant when she left him, Dudley Ward is determined to find his son. There are four ex-husbands, including Ward, all of them angry with Landini, who is about to marry a fifth husband, also present, with his sister, at this bizarre gathering. Landini herself arrives on the scene to complete the madness, and is promptly murdered. Her servants, entourage and husbands all come under suspicion. "Keeper of the Keys" was the final book written by Earl Derr Biggers before his passing a year later.

In the 6th and final book in the mystery series featuring the Chinese-American detective Charlie Chan, we find our hero in Lake Tahoe, California. Chan has been invited as a house guest. He meets a glamorous Out of Printera singer, Ellen Landini, and she is murdered by a gunshot during a party. Her servants and four of her ex-husbands are suspects in the case, all with weak alibis. It is up to Chan to solve the murder. The clues are cryptic and misleading by nature: the singer's own revolver, two scarves, two cigarette boxes with mismatched lids, and the actions of a little dog named Trouble. Part of the solution to the mystery involves an elderly Chinese servant named Ah Sing--the keeper of the keys. Chan solves the case in his usual understated, spectacular fashion.

Near Fine book in a Good, essentially complete jacket. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1932. First Edition. Small octavo, 307 pp. Cloth, illustrated endpapers, with the scarce and well-known deco jacket. A Charlie Chan caper, sprinkled throughout with the Asian-American sleuth's proverbial bon mots and keen deductions. Condition: Jacket chipped and with short tears and creases and spine a bit sunned; volume cloth clean and bright; ownership signature at flyleaf; Near Fine in Good jacket which shows several notable chips but which has not been clipped and is essentially complete. See scans. Keeper of the Keys - the only Charlie Chan novel not made into a movie - is also the only one in which he actually did spout non-stop clever one-liners, as we have come to expect after Warner Oland's performances in film; that characteristic of Chan's was in fact much less developed by Biggers in other titles. Keeper also shows Chan's humanistic side: in one passage, he expresses quiet regret that he has not - as his servant Ah Sing has - maintained his Chinese-ness after so many years in America. Chan feels he is neither American nor Chinese; Ah Sing - stateside longer than Chan - has sustained his ethnic identity. See scans. L57n

In Biggers' final novel, Charlie Chan is invited to millionaire Dudley Ward's home in Lake Tahoe to try to find his missing son. However the murder of Dudley Ward's ex-wife, the soprano Ellen Landini, soon occupies his complete attention, and potential suspects abound. He examines the evidence but seems unable to persuade Ah Sing, the titular keeper of the keys, to break his loyal silence and give him the key to solving the mystery.