The Agony Column

A young American in London begins a courtship through the personal column of a newspaper, and to hold the girl's interest invents a murder in the house next door — then the murder happens. Biggers created Charlie Chan after reading about a real Honolulu detective and meant him as a rebuke to a country that was passing exclusion laws; this 1916 novella came before Chan, and the trick of it is very neat indeed. Fifty-eight plates of Munch, Sickert and their contemporaries, from music halls to North London streets, catch the uneasy city mood of the tale.