<ul> <li>This edition includes the following editor&#39;s introduction:<i> Charlie Chan, a heroic detective created by Earl Derr Biggers to the delight of mystery lovers</i></li></ul><br />American novelist and playwright Earl Derr Biggers had always been interested in mystery fiction, but his interest in Hawaii clearly stems from a 1919 vacation in Honolulu. While there, he read a newspaper article on a Chinese detective named Chang Apana. Apana would become the model for Charlie Chan in Biggers&#39; 1925 novel, &quot;The House Without a Key,&quot; and there quickly followed five more Charlie Chan novels.<br /><br />The novel &quot;Fifty Candles&quot; - first published just two years after that 1919 vacation - shows how Hawaii, China, and murder had already begun to come together in Biggers&#39; imagination.<br />The story starts in a courthouse in Honolulu, moves to China, then to fog-shrouded San Francisco. Many of the elements used in the Charlie Chan series are present: Chinese characters (both sinister and sympathetic), the Honolulu legal system, a shrewd detective (in this case, the lawyer Mark Drew rather than a policemen), and a baffling murder complete with red herrings and plenty of suspects. Though &quot;Fifty Candles&quot; is a murder mystery, it is also a romance, with the romantic elements at times in the forefront. Mostly, though, it is a book that will delight Biggers&#39; many fans as they trace the origins of Charlie Chan.