The Kalends of Charlie Chan: At the Olympics

Note: Taking a break from Our Favorite Lawyer, this fast-moving  B‑movie mystery is set against real 1936 Berlin Olympic footage. It blends espionage, familial warmth, and old-school exoticism. Critics praise its pacing and period intrigue, yet deplore dated stereotypes and Warner Oland’s yellowface.  Entertaining but be prepared to make the usual allowances.

Charlie Chan at the Olympics
1937 / 1:11
Tagline: “Murderous Spies invade Olympic Games!”
[youtube]

This above-average Charlie Chan movie leans more toward espionage thriller than traditional whodunit. Set at a U.S. airbase near Honolulu, the plot revolves around foreign agents attempting to steal a device capable of remotely controlling aircraft. Their scheme escalates when they hijack a test plane and silence the pilot permanently.

Honolulu police enlist detective Charlie Chan (Werner Oland) to dismantle the spy ring. The pursuit spans continents: Lee Chan (#1 Son, played by Keye Luke) sails aboard the Manhattan liner, while Chan travels on the Zeppelin Hindenburg – the same airship that had a rendezvous with Destiny in New Jersey  in 1937. The film incorporates authentic footage from the Berlin Olympics, including Jesse Owens’ historic relay performance, though marred by the voice-over: “Look at that boy run!” The climax delivers genuine suspense and a satisfying reveal.

While the use of yellowface is rightly criticized today, Oland offers one of his stronger portrayals of Chan. The character’s defining trait - unflappable self-control - emerges through his courteous interactions with allies and adversaries alike. When Lee is kidnapped, Chan’s paternal concern feels authentic and moving.

The film opens ironically with Chan passing his annual physical with ease. In reality, Werner Oland died in 1938 at age 58, weakened by chronic alcoholism and COPD aggravated by smoking.

European Reading Challenge #2

I read this for the European Reading Challenge 2026.

The Fall - Albert Camus

This is a novel of confession, a monologue from a man who shouts into the abyss, not expecting any reply. Jean-Baptiste Clamence, once a respected Parisian lawyer, now wanders the bars of Amsterdam, recounting his descent with the clarity of one who has lost faith not only in others but in himself.

His crimes are various. A road rage incident, a woman poised to leap into the Seine - he did nothing. And in doing nothing, he became something else: not a coward, not a villain, but a watcher. A man who sees too clearly the absurd theater of daily life, the endless posing, the judgments, the masks. He is not defiant, not repentant. He is ironic. Detached. Silent. Not a monster but an imp, assenting to beliefs that don’t do him any good.

To mistake Clamence for Camus is to miss the point. The narrator is not the author’s mouthpiece but his warning. Clamence is what happens when one lives without authenticity, without responsibility. For us hardcore readers - especially those hardened by work and literature, tempted by postmodern games - Clamence is a cautionary figure. He reminds us that thoughts, words, and actions - inaction too - are not abstractions. They have weight. They leave marks.

The title The Fall is not merely personal. It is historical. It evokes the collapse of complacencies and illusions after the Great War and The Slump and the Second World War, the revelation of what humanity is capable of under pressure - internal, external, ideological, economic, social. Camus, in this slim novel, delivers philosophical ideas concisely.

Some critics call The Fall Camus’s greatest achievement. It is certainly his most intimate. In awarding him the Nobel Prize in 1957, the world recognized not just a writer, but a man who understood that the modern soul, stripped of its certainties, must still bear the challenge of freedom and the consequences of silence.

Japanese Literature Challenge 2026

I read this for the Japanese Literature Challenge 19.

A Man – Keiichiro Hirano

In this 2018 novel, the titular man lives under someone else's name and identity. Using that alias, he marries a divorced woman and leads a happy life in provincial Japan, but after he dies in a logging accident, his widow discovers he was using a false identity.

The story unfolds as the widow and her Tokyo lawyer explore the mystery of who her husband really was. The plot explores some deep questions, such as the adequacy of pessimism as a general guide to life; the formation of identity through ageing, trauma and memory; and the fear of death versus death’s inevitability making mundane life sweeter (or not: "Stop whatever you're doing for a moment and ask yourself: Am I afraid of death because I won't be able to do this anymore?” asks Marcus Aurelius).

Hirano’s lawyer hero is a middle-aged guy with existential anxiety. Hirano also refers to the music in the background, from Billy Preston in the 1970s to Japanese pop stars. These tendencies will make us hardcore readers call to mind Haruki Murakami. However, Hirano is more interior and philosophical, probing how identity is constructed and performed in a social milieu. Hirano’s people are seeking clarity about their own authenticity so they can fulfill their obligations to other people. Murakami's people are intentionally opaque, blank, or emotionally flattened and they drift rather than evolve.

This story seems highly promising, but it's actually a bit haphazard. The reveal unfolds too slowly and the flashbacks don't seem deftly structured. The pseudo-private detective lawyer solves the mystery not through investigative methods or clever deductive reasoning or a dramatic confession, but through sheer chance.

Nevertheless, it's a fairly enjoyable story. The central themes of identity and trauma are present throughout. Hirano makes heartening points about the solace of reading serious fiction. Hirano skillfully captures the way powerful emotions make themselves known in the body, which readers into mindfulness meditation will connect with. He provides informative digressions about how an event like the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 challenges a sclerotic Japanese bureaucracy to make more difficult the lives of vulnerable people in need of help.

Perry Mason 122: TCOT Bigamous Spouse

Note: This 1961 novel (65^th  out of 86) first appeared in a version in The Saturday Evening Post - abridged because despite what the old folks say, back then patience was not a virtue. And once again, we have a brilliant time-shift twist where everyone nails the murder time… just kidding, they all get it spectacularly wrong for reasons that sound good, but are actually terrible, as Mason proves.

Perryism RE Values Formation & Negative Visualization: It’s more than being loyal to your clients. It’s being loyal to the basic principles of justice. And when you’re trying to do that, you have to take it on the chin once in a while - or at least be ready to.

The Case of the Bigamous Spouse - Erle Stanley Gardner

Gwynn Elston sells kiddie books door to door in the days before going on somebody’s porch would get you shot. One day she knocks on the door of Franklin Gillett. The man’s kid looks like Felting Grimes, husband of Nell - Gwynn’s best friend and housemate. Then she sees Gillett’s photo. Same face. Same guy? Gwynn goes home uneasy.

Felting starts asking questions about her day. Too many questions. Later, he hands her a drink that tastes wrong. Bitter. Gwynn figures she’s in trouble. She calls Perry Mason. Perry tells her to keep quiet and stay sharp 

Trouble doesn’t wait. Felting Grimes takes a bullet. Dead. Lt. Tragg and DA Burger smell blood and line Gwynn up as the shooter. Perry warns her: don’t talk. Talking never helps. But cops lie. They tell her she can go home if she spills. She spills. She’s kept in custody. Surprise.

Nell Grimes isn’t just a wife - she’s a fighter. In Gardner’s world, lots of women aren’t shrinking violets. Nell swings her heels at Perry in a car. Could take an eye out. Gwynn’s no pushover either. She’s a working girl who knows how to handle wolves and mashers. Gardner liked women tough.

The case drags Perry and Della Street up to a mountain town. Gardner slows down, sketches two locals: an undertaker with dry humor and a poacher who blushes around Della. Nice touch - Della feels her loyalty to Perry in a quiet moment. Gardner could do that in two lines.

Late career Gardner still moves time like a pro, but you start wondering: after all these years, was Gardner writing the novels with the idea they would be adapted into an episode of the TV show? This one was in fact an episode in Season 7.

I read it. Glad I did, for its plot and storytelling. Proud to be one of the last Gardner fans still above ground. This one’s fine.

  

Perry Mason 121: The Women of Cool & Lam

Note: This fan gets the feeling that Erle Stanley Gardner wrote the Perry Mason novels in order to meet the payroll but had fun writing the Cool & Lam books. The Cool & Lam novels have deeper characterization and more vivid scene setting. I don’t much like comparing so I will leave it by saying the Cool & Lam stories hinge on the comic interplay between oil Bertha and water Donald while Mason novels usually just rise to droll.

The Women of Cool & Lam

Bertha Cool smashes the china shop of the hard-boiled genre like Charles Ruggles in If I Had a Million. Private eye novels usually feature lean, tight-lipped men and sultry femme fatales. Bertha blows up these detective novel stereotypes: overweight, middle-aged, mercenary, inflexible, and indifferent to lady-like ways.  She dresses well and wears expensive jewelry to please herself, couldn’t care less about male-gazey expectations concerning deportment or docility.

She’s the boss, hiring disbarred lawyer Donald Lam as her underling and cutting deals with clients on her own terms. Bertha is well-aware she has a narrow skill set but she possesses supreme confidence in her own realism about the basic motives: love and hate, lust and money. Bertha doesn’t take men too seriously because they are too easy to manipulate and too liable to get carried away by petty emotions and stupid urges.

Gardner’s depictions of women with agency don’t stop with Bertha. His Cool & Lam women – clients and suspects – manipulate others to conceal their ambition. An heiress feigns helplessness while plotting like Machiavelli (Beware the Curves); a playgirl weds a codger for her financial security but fondly indulges his kicks in his twilight years (Some Women Won’t Wait); a savvy city woman is determined nothing and nobody will interfere with her freedom (Some Slips Don't Show). These independent women indirectly suggest nothing replaces having self-respect and thinking for one’s self and clear goals are useful to have in a society merciless to the ignorant and passive.

In a genre that usually puts men center stage, Gardner’s women invite readers to question the extent to which virtue and vice are anything more than conventions to deal with the economic realities that our culture imposes on all of us.

Perry Mason 120: Best O' The Sixties

Note: By the time the 1960s rolled around, Erle Stanley Gardner was no longer merely writing Perry Mason novels - he was presiding over a booming entertainment empire. The TV show needed scripts approved, the Cool & Lam books demanded their share of attention, and the “fiction factory” he’d built chugged along like a well-oiled if overworked locomotive. In this carnival of deadlines, banquets, fan clubs, and civic obligations, Gardner kept producing the Mason books with the efficiency of a man who normalized feeling sleep deprived. But that kind of relentless success has a cost: the bag of tricks and repetitions that begins to fray with overuse. But below are well worth reading.

Perry Mason in the Sixties: The Ones That Didn’t Limp

The Case of the Stepdaughter’s Secret (1963)
Set in the 1963 Los Angeles heat, this longer and bleaker late‑career entry opens when three estranged members of the Bancroft family separately approach Perry Mason after a blackmail note surfaces. Wealthy patriarch Harlow panics that his criminal past is exposed; daughter Rosena is being watched and manipulated; and wife Phyllis pays blackmailers in a futile attempt to maintain control. Mason counters with elaborate tactics that work, though the family remains fractured. The prose is sparse, the logic cool, and the emotional temperature low, yet a sharp reveal and Gardner’s stripped‑down style make the novel succeed despite its emotional austerity.

The Case of the Queenly Contestant (1967)
Mason advises poised buyer Ellen Adair, who fears her long‑hidden past will be exposed: a teenage pageant win, a vanished Hollywood trip, and, in the phrase of the day, an illegitimate child. Seeking private‑counsel guidance, she withholds key facts, prompting Mason to unravel a tangle involving a duplicitous lawyer, a vanished tycoon, blackmail, and a murdered nurse. While Mason, Della, and Drake feel flatter than in earlier novels and the supporting cast leans on stock types, the plot is tighter than many Sixties entries. It also explores evolving attitudes toward single mothers with more empathy than we would expect from a man born in the late Victorian era and raised in a rural area.

The Case of the Waylaid Wolf (1960)
This sturdier entry opens with Loring Lamont luring stenographer Arlene Ferris to a cabin, where his advances escalate toward attempted date rape. She escapes and consults Mason, determined to press charges despite the threat to her reputation. When Lamont is later found stabbed, police turn to her as the obvious suspect. Gardner explores witness misidentification, physical doubles, and the tension of Mason trusting a client whose honesty sometimes clouds the facts. As the 100th Perry Mason novel, it has more moral bite than expected, a sharper edge, and a justice‑minded energy that makes it one of the more vigorous books of the decade.

The Case of the Worried Waitress (1966)
A troubled waitress seeks Mason’s help after learning her miserly aunt hoards cash and fakes blindness. Before Mason can intervene, Kit is accused of robbery and assault, and corporate feuds complicate matters. The anxious young client is one of Gardner’s more fully human creations, her mix of fear, loyalty, and vulnerability giving the novel warmth Gardner usually did not do. While the mystery is simpler and less mechanical than Gardner’s trick-heavy designs, the mix of diners, boarding houses, and small‑time operators delivers a “working‑class Los Angeles” texture reminiscent of the early Cool and Lam novels. Emotion outweighs puzzle, but the book holds together through sincerity and momentum.

The Case of the Ice‑Cold Hands (1962)
One of the stronger, more atmospheric early‑Sixties entries, this 1962 novel reworks familiar Mason components - an unmissed victim, evasive client, and layers of deception - but remains pleasant, brisk reading. The racetrack betting milieu gives the story a vivid sense of place, benefiting from Gardner’s longstanding fondness for specialized subcultures. Gamblers, touts, and shady operators stand out more sharply than the interchangeable models and heiresses and earnest young suitors who populated some Sixties stories. Though not intricate, the plot is tight and the environment well textured, making this a highlight of the decade.

The Case of the Shapely Shadow (1960)
Secretary Janice Wainwright brings Mason a briefcase of cash tied to her boss’s blackmail mess. After Mason counts it, Janice leaves with the money and vanishes, followed soon by the boss himself being found killed. Janice is charged with murder, and Mason’s courtroom maneuvers unravel a layered puzzle featuring impersonation, doubles, and a mysterious look‑alike whose “shadow” becomes the book’s thematic spine. Unlike many sagging Sixties entries, this one moves briskly, its clues, testimony, and red herrings coming neatly into place. Stylish, twist‑heavy, and energized, it is one of the decade’s strongest 

The Case of the Duplicate Daughter (1960)
This fast, teasing cat‑and‑mouse mystery begins when Carter Gilman disappears, leaving behind blood, cash, and a note for Mason. Imposters, threats, fake identities, and blackmail follow, culminating in a discovered body and a puzzle revolving around a possibly duplicated daughter. The melodramatic identity ambiguity is handled with Gardner’s usual speed and clarity, and the pacing is more energetic than many Sixties entries, avoiding the mid‑book becalmed feeling. The clients have enough emotional weight to raise the stakes, and the tangled identities generate real heat. Mason lacks his usual near‑omniscient smoothness – refreshingly - needing maneuver, improvisation, and deduction to win. Some of the identity complications rely on coincidence, but the overall construction remains lively and engaging.

Perry Mason 119: The Middling Sixties

Note: By the late Fifties, Erle Stanley Gardner had become something of a cultural phenomenon: not just a bestselling author but a brand, a guarantee, a machine that had to keep producing Perry Mason on schedule. His audience wanted the same flavor every time, hot off the grill - no experimenting, no departures, no late-style eccentricities. And the publishers weren’t about to encourage risk in a franchise that paid everyone’s rent. The Mason novels under review come from that era, when Gardner was a master craftsman caught in the velvet chokehold of his own popularity, repeating the enchanter’s tricks with professional polish even as age and fatigue gently tugged at the cords of the Dictaphone.

Perry Mason in the Sixties: The Middling

The Case of the Bigamous Spouse (1961)
Gwynn Elston suspects her friend’s husband, Felting Grimes, is living a double life after noticing uncanny resemblances and surviving a possible poisoning. Mason advises caution, but Felting is soon shot dead, and Gwynn becomes the prime suspect after police trick her into talking. The bigamy hook snaps, the identity tangles have real energy, and - for once - Mason must think his way forward rather than glide in on his usual omniscient hunches. To my mild dismay, the standard 1961 décor is present: characters sturdy as manila folders and dialogue dictated while lending half an ear to Vin Scully calling the Dodgers. Yet compared to its weary Sixties neighbors, the novel showcases strong women, colorful side characters, and a brief but welcome flicker of the old Gardner magic.

The Case of the Reluctant Model (1962)
Millionaire art collector Otto Olney wants to sue critic Colin Durant for calling one of his paintings a fake. Mason advises against it but senses a deeper con involving Durant and reluctant model Maxine Lindsay. When Mason and Della Street discover a corpse in Maxine’s apartment - and Maxine missing - Tragg and Burger resume their long‑standing irritation with Mason’s talent for stumbling into bodies. The art‑world angle promises glamor but mostly delivers that unsettling Tiki mask on Mason’s office wall. Granted, the plot moves briskly, Mason actually does investigative labor rather than omnisciently materializing answers, and the characters - flat as pancakes - serve their purpose.

The Case of the Mischievous Doll (1963)
Dorrie Ambler arrives terrified, flashing an appendectomy scar as proof of identity. After gunshots at the airport, she’s arrested and unmasked as heiress Minerva Minden. The mysterious doll with hidden clues, switched identities, and tangled domestic backstories give the book a pulpy, slightly eccentric flavor - exactly the sort of Sixties oddity Gardner sometimes used to jolt Mason out of his signature unflappability. The premise intrigues even as the characters stay thin and the plotting mechanical. The investigation wanders with too many interviews and too little narrative zip, and the ending resolves everything abruptly enough to make readers suspect Gardner was writing this as a treatment for the TV script it was soon to become. Yet the prose stays clean and professional, even if inspiration is in short supply.

The Case of the Blonde Bonanza (1962)
Here Gardner gives us Perry Mason on a strict budget of plot, energy, and possibly sleep. The dieting‑resort premise promises fizzy fun, but the novel arrives thin - ironically the only thing in the story that does. Characters drift through like underpaid extras, the mystery holds together with the literary equivalent of staples. The silver linings: the pages turn, the prose hustles, and Mason performs his contractual quota of cleverness. Not dreadful - simply Gardner pressed for time and somehow getting the job done. Trollope wasn’t the only writer who viewed fiction as a job rather than a mystical calling.

The Case of the Phantom Fortune (1964)
This entry offers another Sixties amble through the Perryverse, where fortunes appear, disappear, and reappear with the solidity of a stage magician’s rabbit. The premise - mysterious inheritances, vanishing assets, rummy heirs - has potential, but Gardner handles it with the airy commitment of a man trying to finish so he can go fishing. The plot rambles amiably, characters shuffle in with the enthusiasm of tax auditors, and Mason solves matters simply by knowing more than the author bothers to reveal. Not truly bad, just exasperatingly thin: a phantom fortune indeed, flickering briefly before vanishing into deadline smoke. On the plus side, the novel reads fast - always Gardner’s indestructible superpower.

The Case of the Beautiful Beggar (1965)
This 1965 novel finds Gardner guiding Mason through another Sixties contraption involving an attractive young woman in peril. Daphne Shelby seeks help when her uncle’s bank account is drained and scheming relatives declare him incompetent in order to seize his assets. Mason battles the conservatorship and recovers funds through legal maneuvers, but the later murder and trial feel obligatory rather than inspired. The premise - reflecting aging Gardner’s sharp interest in elder exploitation - is compelling, but the plot shuffles where it should jog, the supporting cast could be swapped out like AA batteries, and the wrap‑up arrives with Gardner’s usual abruptness. The upside is that the pages flip, Mason gets his licks in, and the book passes painlessly - late Gardner’s minimal but reliable standard of excellence. Or, if you will, okayness