How to rate a Charlie Chan book in 2023? Do you remember the decades of yellowface movies, the stilted use of proper vocabulary and improper grammar in the mouth of Chan, the repeated stereotypes of many ethnicities... or do you look to a book that, when published, attempted to convince the derangedly racist pulp action/mystery audience that, actually, an ethnic "melting pot" wasn't just a good thing, but was a chief feature in the uniquely enchanting world of pre-Statehood Hawaii.... or do you look to the books to its left and right in that genre and timeframe and, with dawning horror, realize that this may be the most sympathetic portrayal of a Chinese person in a pulp mystery until the Mr. Wong short stories of Hugh Wiley over a decade later?  There truly isn't a good answer. Let us therefore say this:

 This is a book where Chan is depicted charismatically and in a complimentary fashion, but it isn't his book. It's a book about a guy from a stilted background who goes West (further West even than the shore of California) and discovers a land of enchantment where he falls in love, gets tangled up in the history of piracy, robbery, murder, slavetrading and - fortunes made - people hiding from the consequences of those actions in the now "tamed" West.  The experience changes him for the better and he gets the girl and the murder is solved.  If we kept to Chan's point of view, perhaps we would be able to find out for ourselves about his interiority.  Through the perspective of our Easterner, we have no such insight.  Without it all we have is the surface and while there are charming things about the portrayal of Chan - certainly you can see how an audience might fall in love with him, a big fat detective who never gives up and is always able to shift to a new point of view when things get cloudy - the author essentially fails to overcome the caricature.  Comparing Chan to the white characters and their priorities and internal experiences is instructive. They are all individuals, not deep characters by any means, since this is a pulp mystery, but not just a surface collection of statements and traits.  In the end, by any criteria you care to choose, this is the real downer of The House Without A Key. And from that point you can see, stretched out before you, all the wildly racist shit that would come with Chan adaptations over the years, despite, perhaps, the author's intentions.  I just can't recommend it.