Kay Tracey

The Green Cameo Mystery by Frances K. Judd, 1952, 1980.

The story begins with Kay’s friends, Betty and Wendy, treating her to lunch, but when the girls try to pay the bill, the cashier says that their money is counterfeit. Betty and Wendy say that their mother gave them the cash, and she got those particular bills on a recent trip to San Francisco. The cashier tells them to contact the Secret Service and report the counterfeit money and tell them where it came from. (This book is old, but the Secret Service still investigates counterfeit money.)

As the girls leave the restaurant, they talk about the errands they want to run this afternoon. There is an auction Kay wants to attend because there’s a beautiful Chinese desk that she wants to get for her cousin, Bill, for his new office. However, she remembers that she needs to drop Bill’s shirt off at a laundry before they go to the auction. The laundry is a cliched Chinese laundry (connections are building in this story), but the man Kay usually sees there is absent today. The woman at the counter, Lily Wong, says that she’s the man’s sister and that her brother is unwell. Kay asks if he’s been to a doctor, and Mrs. Wong fearfully says that she doesn’t think that there’s anything a doctor could do against the green cameo. She explains that her husband got the green cameo in Shanghai, but it’s cursed, and it brings misfortune to her family every three years. While the girls are talking to the woman, she gets a phone call from someone who tells her that her daughter Lotus is now missing, having disappeared from the college she attends. (Yeah, Lotus. I don’t know if that’s a name that Chinese people actually use, but many of the Chinese names in this book struck me as being made up. I could be wrong because I’m not an expert on Chinese names, but they have that look.)

Mrs. Wong tells Kay that she tried to hire a medium named Cara Noma to break the curse of the green cameo, but she hasn’t been able to do it. Right away, Kay is sure that Cara Noma is a fraud. Kay volunteers to help find Lotus. A prime motive for her disappearance is Lotus’s impending arranged marriage to an older but wealthy businessman named Foochow. (I Googled that name, and apparently, it’s a romanized version of a place name, not a last name.) Kay’s first thought is that Lotus may have run away because she decided that she didn’t want to participate in this arranged marriage. Mrs. Wong also tells Kay that Cara Noma claims that her daughter has sold a jewel box with a green lotus cameo on the lid that Mr. Wong gave her as a betrothal gift.

The medium Cara Noma shows up while Kay is discussing the situation with Mrs. Wong and starts into her mystical act about how she’s going to break the curse. Kay impatiently tells her that it’s all nonsense and that she’s just taking poor Mrs. Wong’s money. Even Mrs. Wong agrees because, so far, Cara Noma hasn’t produced any results, and Kay is nice enough to offer to help her for free. Angrily, Cara Noma grabs both Kay and Mrs. Wong and uses some blood from a cut on Mrs. Wong’s finger to draw a red X on Kay’s forehead. She declares that she has transferred the curse of the green cameo to Kay and that Kay will soon see that the curse is real.

Kay still doesn’t think that the curse is real, and she and her friends head over to the auction where she wants to buy that desk for her cousin. Before the auction begins, Kay and her friends are looking over the items for sale when Kay discovers that the desk she wants to buy has a secret compartment in it. On impulse, she puts the envelope holding her money in the secret compartment to try it out. (This is so dumb, Kay. Don’t put all of your money in the secret compartment of a desk you don’t own!) Then, she gets distracted when she spots a jewelry box matching the one described by Mrs. Wong. Then, Kay’s nemesis from school, Chris Eaton, shows up and tells her not to waste her time bidding on the jewelry box because she wants and she has more money than Kay.

It turns out that Kay is unable to buy the desk she wanted to buy because the bidding is much higher than she can afford. Then, a man named Sidney Trexler shows up and protests the auction, saying that the desk belongs to him and he doesn’t want to sell it. It turns out that he’d been storing the desk there, but the desk was being sold because he hadn’t paid his storage fees. Mr. Trexler says that he has the money to pay his fees now and wants the desk back because he’s planning to get married and will need the furniture. The man who was going to buy the desk agrees to cancel his offer to buy so Mr. Trexler can have the desk back. When the jewelry box comes up for sale, both Kay and Chris Eaton are outbid by Mr. Trexler as well. Kay is disappointed because she was hoping to get the jewelry box for Mrs. Wong.

However, the mystery is only just beginning. When Kay gets home, she finds that the envelope she thought held her money isn’t really her envelope. She did remember to retrieve the envelope from the desk before it was sold (for a moment, I was afraid that she would forget), but by mistake, she grabbed a different envelope. Is this the first bad luck of the curse? Kay knows that she has to talk to either the auction house or Mr. Trexler to get her envelope and money back! Then, a taunting comment from Chris Eaton reveals that Mr. Trexler’s fiancee is actually Lotus Wong. Now, Kay really needs to find Mr. Trexler!

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Spoilers

So, right from the beginning of this story we have the mystery of the counterfeit money, the mystery of the cameo curse, the mystery of the fake medium, the mystery of the disappearance of Lotus Wong, and the mystery of Mr. Trexler and his engagement and sudden money. The girls also come to wonder about Mr. Wong. He seems to have much more money than his brother-in-law who operates the laundry, and his wife seems afraid of him. What is Mr. Wong’s business, and why doesn’t he do more for his brother-in-law? Are any or all of these things connected? Actually, yes. At first, I wasn’t sure how they were going to circle back toward the counterfeit money from the beginning of the book, but it turns out that Cara Noma is in on the counterfeiting operation. For a time, it looks like Mr. Wong might be the head of the operation, but it turns out that he’s innocent. I thought that Lotus’s reasons for running away were poorly explained. Part of it is that she doesn’t want to marry Foochow, but there’s also a side plot about Cara Noma using hypnosis to control both Lotus and her mother. I think the implication is that she was doing it to milk Mrs. Wong of money while keeping Lotus hidden from her, but it seemed like an odd complication to me since Cara Noma was also involved in the counterfeiting ring.

I’m not sure that I’d call anything in the book “racist”, although I think there may be justification for saying that parts are “stereotypical” and probably a bit culturally shallow and “tone deaf.” My first impression was that the author and the characters in the story like Chinese culture for being exciting and exotic, but in that way where there’s no real depth to their knowledge it and it comes off as being a bit like caricatures of Chinese people you might see in old movies. I’ve seen some of the old Charlie Chan mystery movies, and the way the characters in the book talked kind of reminded me of them. The Chinese names seem pretty stereotypical and so does the way they speak in broken English. They don’t do the “Engrish” thing where the ‘l’s and ‘r’s are swapped, but the Chinese characters don’t speak proper English, and they throw in phrases and expressions that I think are meant to sound quaintly foreign. At one point, Mrs. Wong says to the girls, “When you see Lotus again, tell my lovely flower not study too hard. Much study make many wrinkles.” I’m not sure whether that was just a joke or if it was supposed to be some kind of pseudo-proverb, like Charlie Chan used to make. On the other hand, some of the speech patterns I thought might be old stereotypical tropes from movies might have more grounding in real life than I’ve credited them for having. Lily Wong also sometimes refers to herself in the third person, “Lily Wong not sure,” instead of “I am not sure.” I’ve met people in real life whose first language was Chinese, and none of them do this. I thought at first that this might be another trope carried over from old movies, but I looked it up, and apparently, actual Chinese speakers can do this sometimes. The technical name for it is illeism. So, while some of the speech patterns seem like old movie tropes, they might not be completely wrong for real life.

One part of the story that bothered me is the Chinese play that Kay’s school decides to perform. Kay and her friends are told that “a delegation of foreign visitors to the United States” (no nationality/nationalities specified at first) would be visiting schools in the area, including the high school that they attend. To entertain their foreign visitors, the school decides that they’re going to put on a short play, and of course, the drama teacher picks one with an “Oriental” theme called “The Pagoda Mystery.” (“Oriental” is the word they use, which is rather vague and considered somewhat outdated now. Some people consider it demeaning because it has old associations with stereotypes that people don’t want to perpetuate. The demeaning part seems to be more in the attitudes associated with its use than in the word itself. It is a technical geographic term that refers to the Eastern Hemisphere, but my thought is that referring to an entire hemisphere is rather vague. I don’t think the book meant it badly, but in modern times, it’s generally considered more polite and a sign of being well-educated to use the most specific word possible when describing geographic regions or groups of people. When people are overly vague, it makes it sound like they don’t know what they’re talking about or what the more specific word is. If this play is specifically about China, they could have just said that.) It’s rather coincidental that they’re doing a mystery play set in China right when Kay is working on a mystery involving people from China, but those types of coincidences happen often in Kay Tracey books. I wasn’t able to find any real information about this play, so I’m pretty sure sure that it was just made up by the author of the book so the school would have just the right kind of coincidental play to perform. Also, of course, Kay gets the lead role in the play when she tries out for it, that of a beautiful Chinese maiden. If there are any Asian students at this school, they aren’t mentioned, so I don’t think there are any. Charlie Chan was also not played by Asian actors, even though other characters in the series were, which is why they bother people now and there haven’t been any new ones made since 1981. The book says, “But because of her recent experiences at the Wong home, Kay spoke her lines with special feeling and proved her familiarity with Chinese customs and people. Therefore, the leading role was given to her.” I’m not convinced that her conversations with Mrs. Wong have really given her deep knowledge of China, but they did have tea together at her house, so maybe there’s an implication that she told her more about Chinese tea customs than the book described or something.

By another coincidence, it turns out that Mrs. Wong was in a production of the same exact play in China when she was young, and she played the part that Kay is going to play, so she coaches Kay in how to play the part. (What stroke of luck! See, Kay isn’t cursed!) Mrs. Wong assures Kay that when her face is made up to look Chinese, no one will know that she isn’t really Chinese because she’s such a good actress. I suppose that people in the 1950s, when this book was originally written, would be a little more accepting of non-Asians wearing makeup to play Asians (called “yellowface“) just because it was done more often back then, and people get comfortable with things they see often. It’s not particularly comfortable for modern people because our society is sufficiently diverse to have actual Asians playing Asian roles without the help of cheesy makeup, so this part of the story is eye-rolling, especially the way everyone fawns over Kay being so authentic-seeming. Also, much of what Mrs. Wong teaches Kay seems to involve making gestures with her hands and fluttering her eyelashes when she speaks, which the drama teacher praises as being very realistically Chinese. It’s hard to know exactly what that means without seeing exactly what Kay’s doing, and the description doesn’t say much. The fluttering eyelashes make me think that she’s acting flirty, but I don’t know if that’s suppose to be part of her role in the play or not because we’re never told the full story. Again, I could be wrong, but it Kay’s apparently authentic performance seems more like something from an old movie than real life.

I think that the drama coach choosing a play from China was meant to be some kind of salute to the foreign visitors (and a coincidence that helps further the plot of Kay’s mystery), but it seems like a kind of tone-deaf choice to me, not thinking about what people really want to see and experience when they visit a foreign country. If I were the person making the decisions, I don’t think that I would be comfortable with showing visiting foreign dignitaries a high school production of a play they would already know from their own youths in their country, entirely acted by people wearing makeup to look like them, probably with varying degrees of success. It just seems awkward and might give the impression that they were being made mocked rather than honored. People travel to see new and different things, not imitations of things they already have back home. That would be like someone from New York City going to New Orleans and spending their entire time there watching productions of Broadway plays instead of touring the French Quarter or the Garden District. If you’re just going to do something you could do back home, what did you even make the trip for? Traveling is about seeing things that make different places unique. So, if I were in charge of the high school play, I think I would have picked something that had nothing to do with China, something new and original that the visitors could describe to people back home as something you could only see if you go to America. It might be an American-written play or maybe something that the students put together themselves to show their individual personalities and interests, a view of the modern American teenager, like a collection of student-written short skits or a talent show. Musical performances would be good because people can still enjoy the sounds of the music even if they don’t know all of the words. It’s pretty likely that this school has a band or orchestra, and there may be some unofficial student bands that could play. Dancing, gymnastics, and juggling acts might be good, too, if there are people who know how to do those, because people understand what they are just by looking at them. They don’t require explanations like humor that involves puns and might go over the heads of people who aren’t completely fluent in a language. I like the idea of the entertainment being a sort of variety show with music and skits because that’s a traditional form of entertainment that was still popular in the 1950s, and it’s a good format when you have a large group of people because there are multiple leading parts and solos in different acts of the show, avoiding some of the inevitable arguments about who gets the best parts. They could even have displays of artwork or science projects from students who aren’t part of the performing entertainment. It would offer variety for the visitors and give everyone a chance to contribute something.

Of course, there’s a subplot to the story about Chris Eaton, Kay’s school nemesis, trying to steal her part in the play. Chris even goes so far as to drug Kay’s food so she’ll miss the performance. First of all, I’d never be as trusting as Kay, and I wouldn’t eat anything that someone who has a history of doing nasty things gave me. If Kay’s so sharp, she should have figured that Chris would do something nasty to her food. Second, drugging somebody isn’t a harmless prank. Chris apparently slipped Kay a strong sleeping pill, and Kay didn’t even finish everything Chris gave her. We don’t know whether Chris might have accidentally overdosed Kay if she’d eaten it all. People can die from drug overdoses. Chris also couldn’t know for sure whether or not Kay might have been taking some other medication at the time that would conflict with what she gave her. People can also die from mixing the wrong medications. For some reason, Kay and her friends don’t tell on Chris, and Chris isn’t punished. I understand that people don’t like to be thought of as tattletales, but I think that there are limits to what people should be willing to put up with, and being drugged should definitely something no one should tolerate. What she did was serious, and I don’t like it that they’re pretending like it isn’t.

Overall, I found myself often thinking of the old Charlie Chan movies while reading this book, comparing what I was reading to what I’ve seen in old movies. There are reasons why the Charlie Chan movies didn’t last, and I think this book is a decent example of some of those reasons. During their heyday, the Charlie Chan books and movies were welcomed as one of the first portrayals of an Asian hero in American culture who was kind, intelligent, and upheld justice. Even though Charlie Chan was a stereotypical character, he was a stereotype of all that was good, which was a welcome break from previous stereotypes of Asians as devious, evil characters, like the fictional villain Fu Manchu. Charlie Chan was one of the first fictional characters to encourage the American public to see Asian people in a friendly light and even as people to be admired. The Charlie Chan series encouraged a positive interest in Chinese people and culture, even though it was also somewhat shallow and stereotypical. As I said, the actors who portrayed Charlie Chan in movies were not Asian themselves. Hollywood back in the day couldn’t bring itself to put an Asian in the leading role. Culturally speaking, it’s probably best to look at that series as a stepping stone to better things. Once people have been introduced to a concept, we expect them to eventually gain more depth and understanding. Charlie Chan helped people to break away from old, toxic ideas and prejudices, but that doesn’t mean that people should stay at that level of cultural understanding and portrayals. People progress. They grow and learn, and so do societies and cultures.

What I’m saying is that nothing in this story related to China or Chinese culture is educational for children. They won’t learn anything from this book, and most of the books that I read as a child specifically included real facts about other countries and culture to be at least factually-correct or semi-educational. This book doesn’t even define the word “pagoda” for anyone who doesn’t already know it. There are no Chinese words in the story, and when Kay and her friends have tea with Mrs. Wong, they don’t say whether there are any special tea customs they observe. What the book tells you about Chinese people is very general – that they have some interesting antique furniture and art objects, they drink tea, they might be superstitious, not all of them speak good English, some are friendly and helpful while others are sinister criminals, and if you want to act like one on stage, hand gestures and fluttering eyes are pretty important (whatever that means). Some of that stuff is true, particularly the parts about tea, the fascinating antiques, and the fact that some can be good and some bad, like human beings in general. But, there’s not much concrete, factual knowledge here, and some parts might give kids the wrong impression. I had the feeling the whole time I was reading it that the person who wrote it was a fan of old movies and didn’t really know much about Chinese culture to tell anybody in a factual, educational way. The old Scooby-Doo cartoons were kind of like this when they talked about other countries and cultures, too, because many of them were written as kind of spoofs on movies that people would have known when they were first made. If you’re into old movies, you can recognize the references, but they weren’t meant to teach anything or include any real information. If you compare the older Scooby-Doo series to the more modern ones, you’ll notice that some of the modern ones make more of an effort to include some real, educational facts. Scooby-Doo isn’t an educational show, but I have noticed a slight shift in how they talk about other countries and cultures. That’s more the standard of children’s literature and entertainment I’m accustomed to – when someone says something about another country or culture, I expect it to be something factual that shows that the author did at least a little basic research and knows something about what they’re talking about. It’s grating to me sometimes that older, vintage children’s series don’t always do this. Some of them even shamelessly make things up about other countries and cultures just because they think it would make the story more exciting, assuming that the kids reading the books won’t notice or care. If this book sparked an interest and encouraged kids to learn more about China or Chinese culture, it’s not too bad, but by itself, it doesn’t demonstrate any helpful level of cultural knowledge and information.