The Tangled String: A Charlie Chan Mystery takes the famous detective and his family to Boston for daughter Rose’s wedding, where prenuptial planning collides with an empty safe, untimely death, and hints of family scandal.
Rose Chan’s marriage to John Quincy Winterslip promises to be a joyous occasion in the groom’s native Boston, and his family insists on putting up the bride’s parents and nine siblings at the famous Hotel Statler. Honolulu police inspector Charlie Chan welcomes the opportunity to take his devoted wife and their brood to far-off New England, and the Winterslip family introduces them to the Athens of America.
After an enigmatic family heirloom arrives under police escort, Chan soon discovers that the hotel elevator isn’t the only thing that’s out of order. A burglary leads to a suicide-or was it murder? The father of the bride-to-be comes to the aid of Boston police to find the connections between thievery, death and blue-blooded family skeletons. Drawing on ancient wisdom, intelligent deduction and his characteristic wit, Chan must help a junior police detective reveal all as the wedding day approaches.
Table of Content
I A CITY UNTO ITSELF ……………………………………………………….. 1
II AT THE END OF THE CORRIDOR …………………………………. 13
III FACES OF THE LONG DEAD…………………………………………… 23
IV A SPECIAL DELIVERY……………………………………………………… 33
V ‘THEY WERE PROFESSIONALS, MR. CHAN’………………… 45
VI A FAMILY DRAMA…………………………………………………………… 55
VII A NIGHT OF REVELS ………………………………………………………. 67
VIII OTHER NOT-SO-ORDINARY THINGS …………………………… 71
IX ‘AN INTUITION ABOUT TROUBLE’ ……………………………… 83
X ‘ON THE SUBJECT OF TOBACCO’…………………………………. 93
XI BREAKFAST AT CALLAHAN’S………………………………………. 105
XII UNINVITED MIDDAY VISITORS………………………………….. 117
XIII RESIGNED TO THE SITUATION …………………………………… 131
XIV BRODY WATKINS TRIUMPHANT………………………………… 139
XV ‘NOT JUST YET’ …………………………………………………………….. 145
XVI A SECOND POT OF TEA………………………………………………… 153
XVII THE SILVER-HAIRED MAN…………………………………………… 163
About the author
John L. Swann has worked as a broadcast journalist and in public relations and marketing. His career has included stints as a television news director and anchor and a radio anchor, reporter and talk show host whose work has been recognized by the Associated Press and the New York State Broadcasters Association. After leaving broadcasting, he served as chief of staff to the president of the State University of New York Institute of Technology where he authored From the Mills to Marcy, a history of the college. A native of the rural Midwest, he lives in Upstate New York with his wife, Patricia, whose years of encouragement were the impetus for the writing of Death, I Said, the first in a series of new Charlie Chan mysteries that continues with The Tangled String.