Seven Keys to Baldpate Illustrated

By: Biggers, Earl Derr

A famous author comes to a summer mountain resort in the dead of winter, determined to find peace and quiet to write his next book. But before his first night is out, a steady stream of unexpected visitors begins to fill the hotel...men and women with stories of love, loss, and flight...none of them telling the truth. Before the week is out, there will be gunfire, bribery, fights in the snow, and hidden truths unmasked. "Seven Keys to Baldpate" is a mystery that will leave you guessing to the end. Earl Derr Biggers penned "Seven Keys to Baldpate" long before he created his most famous character, Chinese detective Charlie Chan, yet in its day it was a popular best-seller and became the source for no less than seven films.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1657575829
• ISBN13: 9781657575820
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 258 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

There are at least seven movies based on the play written by George M. Cohan.

The stories most aligned with the book share the same name. One outlier is “House of the Long Shadows” (1938), where only the names are similar. This was based on the book, not the play. A lightweight writer, Mr. McGee, felt it was time to write a classic novel. To write this novel, he needed a place of perfect solitude. That place turned out to be an inn high up on Baldpate Mountain, closed for the winter. Little did he know there were seven Keys to Baldpate Inn. Each key could be held by a person or persons with unique characteristics and a good reason for being there. If you believe who they are and their reasons, Mr. McGee suspects them all being part of a convoluted plot that n-o-b-o-d-y will let him in on. We go along for the ride. There is no use speculating. And Mr. McGee's chivalry may be his undoing. Be sure to read the book to the last sentence. I came to this book by Earl Derr Biggers (of Charlie Chan fame) after watching the 1935 version of “Seven Keys to Baldpate” with Walter Brennan as the station master. I have several different video versions of “Seven Keys to Baldpate.” I still have not seen them live; however, the movie versions were based more on the play than the book. Some of the lines were directly out of the book, but many others had that Cohan feel. Meanwhile, the book stands alone as a great example of a 1913 Earl Derr Biggers mystery.