In this story the hero is haunted by a beautiful young woman who tries to stab him to death with a knife. This fantasy recurs on each of his birthdays, becoming more and more real as the years go on. He leaves home to secure a place as groom, but arrives at his destination too late. Forced to retrace his steps, he seeks shelter in a little inn, forgetting that the hour of his birth is approaching. In the middle of the night he awakens, terrified with fright… Based on Wilkie Collins' novel “The Dream Woman”.
Charlie is the intended murder victim here, and he avoids death only by chance. To find the murderer (since, of course, murder does occur), Charlie must outguess Scotland Yard and New York City police.
A man and two women, suspected of stealing bonds, are traced to a country hotel. While Judith, one of the women, is out horseback riding, the other two, Walter and Vera, are arrested. When, during a storm, Judith is injured in a fall from her horse, Boone Pendleton comes to her rescue. Soon the river becomes impassable, and they are trapped in Boone's cabin, where the two fall in love.
Bob Marston, a San Francisco socialite turned amateur detective is assigned to apprehend a gang of bootleggers.
Lionel Twain invites the world's five greatest detectives to a 'dinner and murder'. Included are a blind butler, a deaf-mute maid, screams, spinning rooms, secret passages, false identities and more plot turns and twists than are decently allowed.
While visiting the circus with his family, Charlie is recruited by the big top's co-owner to investigate threatening letters that he's received.
When a friend of Charlie's is found kicked to death by his own race horse on board a Honolulu-bound liner, the detective discovers foul play and uncovers an international gambling ring.
Charlie Chan's investigation of a blackmail-induced suicide as a case of murder leads him into a world of magick and mysticism peopled with a stage magician, a phoney spiritualist, and a for-real mind reader.
Chan, in Paris for a reunion with friends from World War I, becomes involved in investigating the murder of a munitions manufacturer who was supplying arms to the enemy, even as the rising clouds of World War II force the city into nightly blackout status..
While investigating the theft of antiquities from an ancient tomb excavation , Charlie discovers that the body of the expedition's leader concealed inside the mummy's wrappings.
Charlie Chan is sought out by Pamela Gray, a desperate young socialite whose brother Paul awaits execution for the murder of a weapons inventor. Pamela is convinced of his innocence.
While Charlie is distracted with the birth of his first grandchild, son Jimmy impersonates his father in order to investigate a murder aboard a freighter in the harbor.
Charlie's visit to Paris, ostensibly a vacation, is really a mission to investigate a bond-forgery racket. But his agent, apache dancer Nardi is killed before she can tell him much. The case, complicated by a false murder accusation for banker's daughter Yvette, climaxes with a strange journey through the Paris sewers.
Mary Whitman has gone to Reno to obtain a divorce. While there she is arrested on suspicion of murdering a fellow guest at her hotel (which specializes in divorcers). There are many others at the hotel who wanted the victim out of the way. Charlie comes from his home in Honolulu to solve the murder.
When a prominent official is murdered at a banquet honoring Charle Chan, the detective and son Lee team up to expose an opium-smuggling ring.
A dangerous amnesiac escapes from an asylum, hides in the opera house, and is suspected of getting revenge on those who tried to murder him 13 years ago.
Movie star Shelah Fane is seeing wealthy Alan Jaynes while filming in Honolulu, Hawaii, but won't marry him without consulting famed psychic Tarneverro first. Enter inspector Charlie Chan of the Honolulu Police, investigating the unsolved murder, three years earlier, of a Hollywood actor.
Returning from European exile where she avoided testifying against her criminal associates, a former singer with a tell-all diary is murdered to insure her silence.
Although Charlie and Lee are in Monaco for an art exhibit, they become caught up in a feud between rival financiers which involves the Chan's in a web of blackmail and murder.
On a cruise ship from Honolulu to San Francisco, the famous Chinese detective encounters four more murders while trying to figure out the murder of a Scotland Yard friend.