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Chan, Charlie. Charlie Chan was created by Earl Derr Biggers and appeared in six serialized novels, forty-seven movies, a number of radio shows, several comics and a television show from 1925 to 1958, beginning with “The House Without a Key” (The Saturday Evening Post, Jan. 24, 1925).

Charlie Chan works for the Honolulu Police Department, first as a Detective Sergeant and then later as an Inspector. He is Chinese-Hawaiian and lives on Punchbowl Hill in Hawaii with his wife and eleven children. Chan is genial, but his pleasant nature, plump figure, broken English, and fondness for quoting aphorisms and maxims conceals a sharp mind. He is intelligent and wise, well-educated, and a damn good investigator--so good, in fact, that he's often called upon to solve crimes in other parts of the world outside of Hawaii. The crimes he investigates are usually mundane, if tricky, but in Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938) he fights a Mad Scientist with a Brain in a Jar. He is assisted by his sons, who do the strongarm and legwork for him; their names are "Number One Son," "Number Two Son," and so on.

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