This is a review of the novel Charlie Chan Returns written by Dennis Lynds in 1974. This is not to be confused with the Ross Martin movie entitled The Return of Charlie Chan. This novel was excellent!! It had a bit of a modern feel to it in that Jimmy (Number 3 son)was a Lieutenant for the NYPD. Plus there was a scene in what I would consider a "biker bar". Charlie, on vacation, is summoned to NY by an old friend and winds up on the trail of his murderer. It had a very traditional feel to it also. Lots of eccentric suspects, standard questioning, etc. The mystery concluded with Chan calling all suspects together and going through them one by one and then revealing the killer. Plenty of aphorisms and as Chan left New York he tells his son to get a haircut!!

I highly recommend this book to one and all. Lynds captured the ambience of the Chan movies and I read it in the style of Warner Oland, though for some reason I lapsed into Roland Winters for a couple pages.

Daer Chris,

Thank you for your review. I do not believe that I have ever heard a summary of this story before.

"Charlie chan Returns" was the fourth book of a seven-book set that was released in the 1974 by Bantam Books. Here is a small description of this book that I found on the Internet: "Based on a screenplay by Ed Spielman and Howard Friedlander. Novelization by Dennis Lynds."

This leads to the question of whether or not this story was originally written for a Charlie Chan movie that was never made. I looked up Spielman and Friedlander at imdb.com, and the records listed did not show any work on the Ross Martin film.

The "get a haircut" line plus the use of a biker bar seem to place the screenplay, at least, in the late 1960s. (By the early to mid-'70s, longer hair was pretty much accepted in general. Also, in the late '60s, there was, as I remember, a rash of "biker" films made.) This would have been the right time period for the screenplay to have been somehow connected to the Ross Martin project, which, although released in 1979 was filmed in 1971. Perhaps this screenplay was rejected and another, by other writers, Gene R. Kearney and Simon Last, was accepted for use in the movie.

Thank you again, Chris. Maybe, besides giving us a nice review, you have opened another mystery!

Sincerely,
Rush

Well in reading the description to the movie and the cast, there's no comparison at all. Perhaps, as you said, they reject this story for the one they did for the movie. A shame too, for I believe if they stuck with the story I just finished, they'd probably would have kickstarted a whole new series of movies or maybe a television series.

Dennis Lynds has his own website. I think I'll write him and see if he can shed some light. He also wrote two other chan books under a different name. My blog has the listing from July I think.

chris