Wheels Within Wheels: A Charlie Chan Mystery

Wheels Within Wheels

A Charlie Chan Mystery

By John L. Swann

Trade Paperback

Cover Price: $15.95

Charlie Chan travels thousands of miles from Honolulu after a titan of industry pulls strings to engage the services of the detective to do a vital job: prevent a murder.

The mysterious business magnate’s wishes reveal themselves as Chan travels by train from New York’s Grand Central Station to an Adirondack lodge far from the city. Soon, the detective discovers that events are not content to await his arrival, and Death is waiting to greet his train near journey’s end.

Thrust into an investigation that appears unrelated to his assignment, Chan assists the local sheriff in pursuing the guilty. But Death has not done with the famous detective yet, and the beauty of the mountain wilderness cannot eclipse the cold-blooded reality of a murderer at large.

A little group of suspects and conflicting and contradictory potential motives baffle the sheriff, but Chan will call on experience, wit, and his own brand of philosophical wisdom to solve the case—even in the face of a mountain blizzard.

Like John L. Swann’s earlier entries in the new Charlie Chan Returns series—Death, I Said (2023), The Tangled String (2024), and Beyond Murder (2025)—Wheels Within Wheels continues Swann’s revival of one of the twentieth century’s most enduring fictional detectives and mixes mystery, humor, and a hint of romance—all grounded in the wit and wisdom of the original Charlie Chan.

Excerpt

The conductor–he introduced himself as Jacob McVay–led the detective along the cars, down the incline to the bottom of the hill where a few railroad workers stood in silence, smoking and waiting for someone to take charge.

“You have taken steps to notify local authorities of death?” Chan asked McVay.

“No, that is—”

The uniformed man’s black boot slid on a patch of dry leaves, and McVay narrowly escaped an ungraceful fall down the hill. His footwear was not designed for hiking in the woods.

“We haven’t—we do know what the proper procedure is,” he continued, slowing his pace to avoid any further missteps. “It’s just that we’re some distance from the station, and the sheriff—if he’s in this part of the county today—is a few miles farther away than that, at his outpost in Eagle Bay.”

About The Author

John L. Swann has worked as a broadcast journalist and in public relations and marketing. His career has included stints as a television news director and anchor and a radio anchor, reporter and talk show host whose work has been recognized by the Associated Press and the New York State Broadcasters Association. After leaving broadcasting, he served as chief of staff to the president of the State University of New York Institute of Technology where he authored From the Mills to Marcy, a history of the college. A native of the rural Midwest, he lives in Upstate New York with his wife, Patricia, whose years of encouragement were the impetus for the writing of Death, I Said, the first in a series of new Charlie Chan mysteries that continued with The Tangled String and now Beyond Murder.

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