The Copper Mask, and other stories

New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Very Good+ in Very Good dj. 1932. First Edition. Hardcover. [good sound copy, minor age-toning to edges of text block, no other significant wear; the jacket is lightly edgeworn, with a couple of tiny closed tears, very shallow paper loss at top of spine and lower edge of rear panel, tiny edge-tear at bottom of front panel]. "These are stories about the Chinese of San Francisco written with all the authority of one who has known them intimately. The book abounds in the mysterious thrills that are peculiar to the Sons of Han -- dark tales of tong wars and opium smuggling, tales reeking of incense, blood and laughter. Chinese revenge is swift and Chinese humor is refreshing." One of the more uncommon of this author's 50+ published books. Wiley, a white guy from Zanesville, Ohio, was a prolific short-story writer whose specialties often fell along one of two lines, Chinese stories and Negro stories, the latter frequently centered around a character called the Wildcat; no doubt the blurb-writers for the latter issued similar praise for the author's authority and intimacy. To be noted: about two years after this volume appeared, Wiley published the first of twenty short stories about a fictional Chinese-American detective named James Lee Wong, better known (especially in the movies) simply as "Mr. Wong." Monogram made six films from the stories between 1938 and 1940, with the lead role in five of them going to Boris Karloff -- following the same Hollywood logic that had Charlie Chan played by a Swedish-American and a couple of white Americans, and Mr. Moto played by a Hungarian. For the sixth and final film they finally tapped an Asian actor (Keye Luke) for the role, pretty much the definition of too little, too late. ***This book is among the nearly 150 items offered in ReadInk's new Catalog Number 4, "Booking Passage: Books on the Immigrant Experience." You can access this catalog and its contents in any one of three ways: (1) email us to request a PDF to be emailed to you; (2) view or download the catalog from the link on our website's main page; (3) browse the books individually (including a few that didn't make the cut for the catalog) on our website under these two subject headings: "Immigration: Fiction" and "Immigration: Non-fiction." .