Books in Charlie Chan Mysteries series

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.

"Death is the black camel that kneels unbidden at every gate." This is what Charlie Chan tells the guests of the unfortunate Shelah Fane, a glamorous Hollywood movie star who has been murdered while on location beach side in Honolulu. Here the detective confronts his most perplexing case of his long and illustrious career. Chan is aided by a mysterious fortune teller named Tarneverro the Great. It appears that Miss Fane had summoned Tarneverro to Honolulu as she strongly believes in his mystical powers. A number of bystanders do not have alibis in this case, and it takes every bit of Chan's considerable powers to untangle this intricate web of deception and murder.

In this 5th installment of the classic series of mysteries featuring Charlie Chan of the Honolulu Police, we meet Scotland Yard's Inspector Duff, first introduced in Behind That Curtain. Duff is pursuing a callous murderer on an around-the-world tour, and it is only when the ship is docked in Honolulu and Duff is gravely wounded, does Charlie Chan take on the case. This is decidedly unfortunate for the guilty party, because Chan has the culprit well in-hand before the ship makes its final stOut of Print in San Francisco.

Charlie Moon, Ute rancher and investigator, isn't afraid to throw the dice even when a man's life is at stake, but when that man is betting against himself and Moon's ability to save him, that makes for some awfully high stakes.Hard times have come to Colorado, and Moon's ranch is feeling the pinch. Investor Samuel Reed has never had that problem. He seems to have a special intuition when it comes to picking stocks and claims to be able to remember the future, which gives him quite a leg up on Wall Street. So it's no surprise that Reed is confident when he makes a wager with Moon's best friend, Granite City Chief of Police Scott Parish, that Parish can't keep him alive. Even when Reed doesn't give them any details beyond the date and time of his impending demise, that's more than enough information for Moon who wants in on the action and is just as confident that he's well on the way to saving his ranch. But Moon's best plans go awry when instead of one homicide on his hands, he ends up with two.James D. Doss infuses the pages of A Dead Man's Tale, the fifteenth in his popular series, with his potent brand of high spirits and homespun humor that has made him a favorite among mystery readers.

At seven feet tall, Colorado rancher and Ute tribal investigator Charlie Moon is a larger-than-life figure―and a force to be reckoned with, on and off the reservation…Hard times have come to Colorado, and Moon's ranch is feeling the pinch. Not so for Samuel Reed. He seems to have a special intuition when it comes to picking stocks, and claims to be able to remember the future, which gives him quite a leg up on Wall Street. So Reed is quite confident when he makes a wager with Moon's best friend, Granite Creek Chief of Police Scott Parris, that Parris can't keep him alive. Even when Reed doesn't offer any details beyond the date and time of his impending demise, Moon has a sixth sense that everything will turn out just fine…until not one, but two men end up left for dead. Now it's up to Moon―along with the help of his Aunt Daisy, an aged Ute shaman who can communicate with the spirit world―to solve the case. Or die trying…

The incomparable mysteries of James D. Doss, featuring the amiable, outsized Ute tribal policeman Charlie Moon and his irascible shaman aunt Daisy Perika, are brilliantly conceived, richly atmospheric puzzles generously sprinkled with humor and Native American mysticism, and teeming with characters as colorful and memorable as any found in contemporary fiction. The enchantment is more potent than ever before in this spellbinding tale of lethal human depravity and a legendary nightmare come alive.A lawman with a hardy appetite for life and an unshakable faith in the explicable and rational, Charlie Moon has never taken his grumpy aunt Daisy's visions and premonitions seriously. He is especially skeptical of the old woman's stories about "Grandmother Spider," a gargantuan avenging arachnid that allegedly rises up out of Navajo Lake in search of human prey. But on April first, in the still, utter darkness of the Colorado night, Daisy and her young ward, Sarah, see something striding across the Canon del Espiritu. And something carries off Tommy Tonompicket and his unlikely drinking companion, research scientist William Pizinski, that same night, after ripping the hood off of Tommy's truck. And then there's the mangled, headless corpse lying outside a cabin in the mountains, with two large, fanglike punctures in its chest ...Charlie is not prepared to accept a purely supernatural explanation for the recent occurrences.This is murder, in Moon's opinion, pure if not simple -- and by human hands, most probably.Even Charlie's friend, matukach Police Chief Scott Parris-who is more willing than most white men to see the things that hover beyond the edge of this world -- does not yet subscribe to the "mythical monster on the loose" theory that the evidence seems to overwhelmingly suggest. For there are just too many loose threads in this twisted web of blood and secrets, too many lies being spun and sticky pasts being protected -- and soon another death all of which strongly suggest that the dreaded Kagu-ci Mukwa-pi does not, in fact, exist.But then again ... The most audaciously original and continually surprising of his critically acclaimed novels, Grandmother Spider confirms James D. Doss as a true master of the mystical, the hilarious, and the mysterious.

“Mr Mortdecai, why do you suppose I and my superiors have preserved you from death at very very great trouble and expense?” Charlie Mortdecai―degenerate aristocrat and victim of his own larceny and licentiousness―has no idea. Until it is made clear to him that he must marry the beautiful, sex-crazed and very, very rich Johanna Krampf. The fly in the ointment is that Johanna thinks nothing of involving poor Charlie in her life-threatening schemes such as monarch-assassination, heroin smuggling and―worst of all―survival training at a college for feminist spies. Perhaps, it's all in a good cause―if only Charlie can live long enough to find out.

Charlie Moon, Ute rancher and investigator, isn’t afraid to throw the dice even when a man’s life is at stake, but when that man is betting against himself and Moon’s ability to save him, that makes for some awfully high stakes.Hard times have come to Colorado, and Moon’s ranch is feeling the pinch. Investor Samuel Reed has never had that problem. He seems to have a special intuition when it comes to picking stocks and claims to be able to remember the future, which gives him quite a leg up on Wall Street. So it’s no surprise that Reed is confident when he makes a wager with Moon’s best friend, Granite City Chief of Police Scott Parish, that Parish can’t keep him alive. Even when Reed doesn’t give them any details beyond the date and time of his impending demise, that’s more than enough information for Moon who wants in on the action and is just as confident that he’s well on the way to saving his ranch. But Moon’s best plans go awry when instead of one homicide on his hands, he ends up with two.James D. Doss infuses the pages of A Dead Man’s Tale, the fifteenth in his popular series, with his potent brand of high spirits and homespun humor that has made him a favorite among mystery readers.

Charlie Moon, Ute rancher and investigator, isn’t afraid to throw the dice even when a man’s life is at stake, but when that man is betting against himself and Moon’s ability to save him, that makes for some awfully high stakes.Hard times have come to Colorado, and Moon’s ranch is feeling the pinch. Investor Samuel Reed has never had that problem. He seems to have a special intuition when it comes to picking stocks and claims to be able to remember the future, which gives him quite a leg up on Wall Street. So it’s no surprise that Reed is confident when he makes a wager with Moon’s best friend, Granite City Chief of Police Scott Parish, that Parish can’t keep him alive. Even when Reed doesn’t give them any details beyond the date and time of his impending demise, that’s more than enough information for Moon who wants in on the action and is just as confident that he’s well on the way to saving his ranch. But Moon’s best plans go awry when instead of one homicide on his hands, he ends up with two.James D. Doss infuses the pages of A Dead Man’s Tale, the fifteenth in his popular series, with his potent brand of high spirits and homespun humor that has made him a favorite among mystery readers.

Chan is back with a sequel to his award-winning juvenile romp The Mystery Of the Frozen Brains. This time Marty and his buddy Remi are in deep cover as they solve the mystery of the Graffiti Ghoul. Nine-year-old Marty and his francophone buddy, Remi Boudreau, stumble upon graffiti on the school’s equipment shack and begin the adventure of tracking down the culprit. Marty spies on his classmates, wears his mom’s dress to go undercover, and risks losing his best friend as the mystery of the graffiti ghoul leads him to the graveyard. With continued insight into a Chinese boy’s life in a Francophone town in rural Alberta, Chan sensitively portrays the differences of both the real and perceived fears of “the outsider”: someone who knows the injustice of bigotry and the unfairness of poverty. Chan’s humour balances the serious themes of bullying and racism that are revealed in the attitudes and actions of elementary school kids. Recognized as contemporary versions of the Hardy Boys detective novels, the books in Chan’s Mystery Series are first-rate entertainment and highly recommended for kids.

The Mystery of the Frozen Brains is adapted from Marty Chan’s successful radio series The Dim Sum Diaries. Set in a French Canadian town in rural Alberta, the novel develops the coming to awareness of a Chinese boy in a community under the myriad of ethnic influences including French, English and Ukrainian. As serious as the novel’s thematic dispatch is, Chan’s buoyant, gifted humour overrides the tone.