Charlie Chan was created by writer Earl Derr Biggers and appeared in six novels by that author, though the character is probably better known from the more than 40 films made between 1931 and 1949. Biggers was born in Warren, Ohio in 1844. He graduated from Harvard in 1907. His first job was as a journalist writing for the Boston Traveler. He turned for a time to playwriting, but his first effort, You're Only Human, was unsuccessful. That was in 1912, the same year he married Eleanor Ladd. In 1913, Biggers published his first novel--Seven Keys to Baldpate--which was an immediate success (Steinbrunner 27).
In 1919, Biggers had two plays on Broadway in rehearsal at the same time. This created a good deal of stress, so his doctors recommended that he take a vacation. Biggers went to Hawaii, and while there he developed the idea for the novel that would become The House Without a Key, which would be set in Hawaii, but he tabled it at that time. He would go back to it four years later, but by then his memory of Hawaii needed to be renewed. He went to the library and looked through several articles from Honolulu. In one article from the Honolulu Star Bulletin he found an article about a Honolulu detective named Chang Apana. This would become the basis for the character of Charlie Chan (O'Donnell 18).
Critics have tried to relate the two more closely, but i fact, Biggers only used the article as a beginning point and created a character in Charlie Chan who was nothing like Apana. Biggers was interviewed in 1931 and stated,
I never met Chang until I had written three of the Chan stories, and when I did, I found none of Charlie's characteristics noticeable. The character for better or worse, is entirely fictitious (New York Times 7).
The six Chan novels written by Biggers were as follows: The House Without a Key (1925), The Chinese Parrot (1926), Behind That Curtain (1928), The Black Camel (1929), Charlie Chan C...