This is my second Charlie Chan book, and I guess that chronologically it came right before the one I read the other time, because Charlie has never been to San Francisco before, he just came to bring a famous, precious pearl necklace property of his friend Mrs Jordan who wants to sell it because she needs the money, since her son Victor is a bad guy who spent or lost all they had. Mrs Jordan's old friend Mr Eden, profession jeweler, organizes everything: rich P.J.Madder wants them to deliver it to New York as soon as possible; Mr Eden sends his son Bob to meet Charlie but Bob realizes he's being followed. This, combined with a few other facts, first of which is a sudden change of the place where the delivery will take place, make them very anxious. Mr Eden wants Honolulu police sergeant Chan to go with Bob to Madden's ranch in the desert, to make sure that everything's alright, but once they get there Charlie is sure that something's wrong, and doesn't want to part from the pearl. They stay to investigate. The house parrot, property of the Chinese servant, repeats words both in English and in Chinese, and the same day they arrive he shouts words like Help! Murder! Gun! all things that put Charlie in mind something bad has happened. Charlie starts working there as cook with the name Ah Kim, and Bob stays as guest, delaying as much as he can the moment to give him the pearls. They investigate, but they don't know what they're looking for. They slowly discover that a gun is missing, that two shots have been fired, one of which has reached its target, that a man called Jerry Delaney had been there and disappeared, that a sort-of wanderer had seen Madden shot someone in the house.... and yet nothing conclusive, nothing they could ever tell the police. As in the other book, there is a young man who talks too much and is too impulsive, who falls in love with an independent girl with a good job. This is what I like less in these two books: these two young men are even annoying after a while, I wanted to shout 'why don't you shut up and maybe someone could think you have a bit of sense in that head of yours!'.
As it often happens, there is an idiot, a policeman who is a stupid idiot, who is sure that Chan killed Wong only because he is Chinese. I know it's an old book, old mentality, but I'm really tired of these stupid people, just like in real life. I read books to escape reality, but I found the same idiots, so arrogant, so sure of themselves, so sure to be so intelligent, so perfect, and always ready to blame the first foreigner at hand.Idiots..
A curious thing is: local doctor Whitcomb remembers when she used to walk all the way to work from home, because as she puts it 'Mr Ford had not yet been heard of' which I guess means there were no cars and she had to walk.. now she's something like 40, and this is the only thing that really makes you realize how old this book is: 1926. The conclusion starts to get on my nerves: just a bit: how many old books I've read lately where the solution was in the hidden identity of the characters??
Again here, we find that the man they call Madden was not the same that met Mr Eden, he is in fact Delaney impersonating him to rob him of the necklace, and here you see the book's age, maybe, because nobody questions this, but I do (now, in my modern times): if he was so good in his impersonation, and he even had the man's secretary as an accomplice, why did he fix himself on the necklace? Why didn't he take cash money? The accomplices could have taken all the money they wanted and disappear, but instead they wanted the pearls, which seems absurd to me, but nobody in the book asks this question: probably the reason is that at his banks he was too well known, or that he couldn't falsify Madden's signature, or stuff like that, but they could have said that, that's all.
It had been Delaney that night to shoot the real Madden in a shoulder, then they imprisoned him in an old abandoned mine, along with his daughter when she came to meet her father. You see the 'injustice'? Madden and his daughter have been imprisoned, while poor Chinese servant Louie Wong was stabbed and died, surely because he would have recognized his old master from an impostor. Poor Wong, what a bad thing is to be poor, to be a foreigner, to be unimportant...
Yeah, that's one thing that never changes, even now in contemporary books and movies the only thing needed for the happy ending is that the protagonist is ok, no matter how many unimportant extras were left behind, killed with no second thought about it.
The book ends with Bob proposing to Paula, so arrogant, sure she'll marry him, with Charlie telling wonders about marriage. He's totally pro-marriage, but I'd like to know more about what his wife does, other than babies. They're 10 already, and in that other book I read the 11th was born. From his words it seems like she's always there to please him, he never says a word about what she likes or does. Well, this is an old book, I must remember that. It's already enough that these young women work and are independent, I can't ask much more than that, although it is annoying.
Even nowadays boys and girls are not equal. A young boy who repairs his own bike is looked at with pride, but a young girl is told 'you should have let your father do it, look at your dress all dirty' or something like that. It's an injustice, this brainwashing poor girls from the youngest age. I don't know if boys are brainwashed with something too, it's be interesting to know that. Maybe to be strong?
Back to the book, it is here that Chan starts his metaphor of the postman on holiday that goes walking instead of resting, and he'll keep that in the next book.
I understand why he's so anxious to go back home, I wonder how it must be to live in Honolulu or any other place like that. Is it a living paradise or maybe they dream of leaving like I do? Does it feel very isolated? It's now 2015 so I guess they all have internet, emails and all that to keep contact with the rest of the world?
I'd like to try that kind of life.... :-)
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