Charlie Chan was a Chinese detective who solved cases in Honolulu before Hawaii was a state, but it’s accurate to say Chan was born in Warren — or at least his creator was.

Before his death in 1933 at 48, Warren native Earl Derr Biggers wrote six novels featuring the brilliant, philosophical detective. The first of those novels, “The House without a Key,” was published 100 years ago. Those books spawned dozens of films, a stage production and an assortment of merchandise.

To mark the occasion, a few Chan fans from around the country will gather in Warren and present a panel discussion Friday at the Warren-Trumbull County Public Library. The event initially started as a way for two longtime Chan fans to meet face-to-face.

Lou Armagno is the webmaster of thepostmanonholiday.com, a website devoted to Chan and Biggers, and is the author of “The Wisdom Within Earl Derr Biggers’ Charlie Chan: The Original Aphorisms Inside The Charlie Chan Canon.”

Rush Glick is the webmaster of The Charlie Chan Family Home (charliechan.org), another website devoted to all things Chan.

“We said, ‘Let’s meet in Warren, Ohio, for the 100th anniversary of Charlie Chan, the detective,'” Armagno said.

Glick is traveling from California to Warren. Michael Votta Jr., the third panelist for the library event, is coming from Maryland. Armagno, a Middleburg Heights native, only has an hour-long drive from Brecksville.

After getting a low draft number, Armagno decided to enlist in the Air Force instead of being drafted by the Army, and he served from 1971 until 2000. For the past several years, he was stationed in Hawaii, and that’s where he became a fan of Biggers’ novels.

“I decided to investigate the scenes and places in Hawaii that the detective was supposed to go to, and I found out that Earl Derr Biggers actually used a lot of people from real life and a lot of locations from real life in his novels,” he said.

Detective fiction became a popular American genre around the time Biggers created Chan, but he’s seldom mentioned alongside authors that defined the style of those novels, such as Dashiell Hammett, who created Sam Spade, and Raymond Chandler, best known for Phillip Marlowe.

Armagno said he believes one of the things that makes Biggers’ books special is that Chan is such an anomaly compared to the womanizing, tough guy detectives that starred in those books.

“Here’s this family man with 11 children who didn’t really use a gun. He was portly, and he was a Chinese-Hawaiian policeman,” Armagno said. “He was just completely an underdog. If you read the novels, he was often prejudiced against by the very same people he’s investigating. It was a very different detective from any of the early American detectives of history.”

The initial interest shown by followers of the two websites didn’t turn into actual commitments, and Armagno only expects about five Chan fans to travel for the event, but it will give the organizers a chance to share their knowledge and passion for Biggers and the character he created in the town where he was born.

For the panel discussion at 2 p.m. Friday at the Warren library, 444 Mahoning Ave. NW, Armagno will focus on the aphorisms of Chan, often drawn from philosophical and religious sources. Armagno published his book in 2023 because, while many had written about the Chan sayings that had become famous from the movies, no one had focused exclusively on those written in the books by Biggers.

Glick will focus on the character’s transition from books to the screen, an evolution that started with silent-film era serials to a character played by several different actors over the decades. Votto, interim director of the school of music at the University of Maryland, will talk about the scores for different Chan films.

Several rare artifacts also will be displayed from the guests’ personal collections — the 1930s Charlie Chan Card Game; a showbill from Boston Hollis Theatre, where the three-act play “Inspector Charlie Chan” was staged; a first edition of Biggers’ final Chan novel, “Keeper of the Keys”; and an original script of the first screen adaptation of Biggers’ “The House Without a Key.”

Admission for the library event is free.

A screening of the film “Charlie Chan at Treasure Island,” a 1939 release featuring Sidney Tolar as Chan along with Cesar Romero Pauline Moore, will be shown at 7 p.m. Friday at the Robins Theatre. Admission to the movie is $9.25.