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Marceau #4
Y. Cheung, Business Detective
Young Y. Cheung is in a pickle! In order to receive a $100,000 inheritance from his grandfather’s estate, he must get his name mentioned in 1000 U.S. newspapers, “in an honorable fashion” before midnight of the day before the estate is settled. On top of that, his family doesn’t consider his one-of-a-kind profession, business detective, “honorable”. How Y. Cheung uses his inscrutable wiles to gain happiness and the inheritance is a tale only Harry Stephen Keeler could spin.
"It was definitely loopy and is the second of his novels I have read to deal sympathetically and sensibly with Asians in 1930s while everyone else was demonizing or eroticizing them in genre fiction of that era. This is one of Keeler's forays into the 'locked room' and impossible problem genre, but being Keller it involves an outrageous and nearly unfathomable solution." -- G. F. Norris, Golden Age Detection.
- GenresMystery
256 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1938
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11 people want to read
About the author
Harry Stephen Keeler
175 books55 followersBorn in Chicago in 1890, Keeler spent his childhood exclusively in this city, which was so beloved by the author that a large number of his works took place in and around it. In many of his novels, Keeler refers to Chicago as "the London of the west." The expression is explained in the opening of Thieves' Nights (1929):
"Here ... were seemingly the same hawkers ... selling the same goods ... here too was the confusion, the babble of tongues of many lands, the restless, shoving throng containing faces and features of a thousand racial castes, and last but not least, here on Halsted and Maxwell streets, Chicago, were the same dirt, flying bits of torn paper, and confusion that graced the junction of Middlesex and Whitechapel High streets far across the globe."
Other locales for Keeler novels include New Orleans and New York. In his later works, Keeler's settings are often more generic settings such as Big River, or a city in which all buildings and streets are either nameless or fictional. Keeler is known to have visited London at least once, but his occasional depictions of British characters are consistently implausible.
"Here ... were seemingly the same hawkers ... selling the same goods ... here too was the confusion, the babble of tongues of many lands, the restless, shoving throng containing faces and features of a thousand racial castes, and last but not least, here on Halsted and Maxwell streets, Chicago, were the same dirt, flying bits of torn paper, and confusion that graced the junction of Middlesex and Whitechapel High streets far across the globe."
Other locales for Keeler novels include New Orleans and New York. In his later works, Keeler's settings are often more generic settings such as Big River, or a city in which all buildings and streets are either nameless or fictional. Keeler is known to have visited London at least once, but his occasional depictions of British characters are consistently implausible.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 23, 2023
This, the fourth installment in Keeler's immortal Marceau saga is, with one significant qualification, quality Keeler. Plotting is clever without being absurdly complex, wretched ethnic dialog is kept to a minimum, and Keeler's routine stereotyping is more than offset by his sympathetic portrayal of a Chinese man in a Jim Crow-style northern city.
Titular character Y. Cheung is a graduate engineer who works as a "business detective," a job his recently deceased grandfather derisively described as where one "finds pair of 29 cent stockings stolen from white department store." Grandfather was so unimpressed with Y. Cheung's profession his will leaves his $100K estate to his spendthrift cousin unless Y. can get his name in 1,000 American papers for an honorable and exceptional reason by a deadline only days away.
But contrary to what you may have read on the internet, Y. is not "in a pickle." He's pretty much given up on the estate. Instead, he's heading to Indianapolis on a case. The father of an engineering school classmate operates a bridge construction company that has lost a series of bids to a rival firm that can only be explained by a leak. As a bonus, the father also has the only copy of Marceau's death manuscript, "Strange Romance," wherein Marceau encrypted the name of his murder. Y. can also try his hand at decoding the manuscript!
It's with this latter subplot that things go a bit off the rails. Of course, Keeler inserts the whole 90+ pages of "Strange Romance" into the book. Naturally, it's a recycled story that has nothing to do with anything in the book or the Marceau case and the "code" very contrived and absolutely unbreakable by mere readers. The original magazine story was a dull little four-pager. And the extra 90 pages or so only make it worse. The good news though is that it can safely be skipped. As a matter of fact, I urge you to do so. It won't interfere with appreciation of the rest of the book, or even the rest of the Marceau sub plot. And for the record: the coded message boils down to "epilepsy."
This leaves us with a pretty fun little locked room mystery. How are the bids leaked from locked office with occupied by five closely observed people? While not reaching his usual heights, Keeler nonetheless delivers carts of reasonably imaginative red herrings. The chief engineer has a mysterious tattoo, both he and the stenographer are seen sneaking into the office of a doctor associated with a rival firm, the partner is seen destroying a letter to the same rival firm, and so on. And while the explanations and resolutions may not be over the top, they are gratifyingly Keelerian, with the Marceu case being "solved" yet again, the leak stopped, and the happy legatee Y. married off.
Overall, a solid and enjoyable Keeler whose only real flaw (other than the easily skipped "Strange Romance") is that the Marceau case is not well described, making this sub-plot almost incomprehensible to newcomers. But no experienced Keeler fan will be disappointed.
Titular character Y. Cheung is a graduate engineer who works as a "business detective," a job his recently deceased grandfather derisively described as where one "finds pair of 29 cent stockings stolen from white department store." Grandfather was so unimpressed with Y. Cheung's profession his will leaves his $100K estate to his spendthrift cousin unless Y. can get his name in 1,000 American papers for an honorable and exceptional reason by a deadline only days away.
But contrary to what you may have read on the internet, Y. is not "in a pickle." He's pretty much given up on the estate. Instead, he's heading to Indianapolis on a case. The father of an engineering school classmate operates a bridge construction company that has lost a series of bids to a rival firm that can only be explained by a leak. As a bonus, the father also has the only copy of Marceau's death manuscript, "Strange Romance," wherein Marceau encrypted the name of his murder. Y. can also try his hand at decoding the manuscript!
It's with this latter subplot that things go a bit off the rails. Of course, Keeler inserts the whole 90+ pages of "Strange Romance" into the book. Naturally, it's a recycled story that has nothing to do with anything in the book or the Marceau case and the "code" very contrived and absolutely unbreakable by mere readers. The original magazine story was a dull little four-pager. And the extra 90 pages or so only make it worse. The good news though is that it can safely be skipped. As a matter of fact, I urge you to do so. It won't interfere with appreciation of the rest of the book, or even the rest of the Marceau sub plot. And for the record: the coded message boils down to "epilepsy."
This leaves us with a pretty fun little locked room mystery. How are the bids leaked from locked office with occupied by five closely observed people? While not reaching his usual heights, Keeler nonetheless delivers carts of reasonably imaginative red herrings. The chief engineer has a mysterious tattoo, both he and the stenographer are seen sneaking into the office of a doctor associated with a rival firm, the partner is seen destroying a letter to the same rival firm, and so on. And while the explanations and resolutions may not be over the top, they are gratifyingly Keelerian, with the Marceu case being "solved" yet again, the leak stopped, and the happy legatee Y. married off.
Overall, a solid and enjoyable Keeler whose only real flaw (other than the easily skipped "Strange Romance") is that the Marceau case is not well described, making this sub-plot almost incomprehensible to newcomers. But no experienced Keeler fan will be disappointed.
Displaying 1 of 1 review