The review from afar – No. 9Re-revised forward to these overseas reviews:As I emulate a yo-yo, I continue to rely on an old-style Kindle 3G for any non-technical reading. I tip my hat to the fine folks at Project Gutenberg: virtually every title I have or will be reading in the near future comes from them.The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (American title, in England, The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu) begins the most famous series created by the prolific Sax Rohmer (nee’ Arthur Henry Ward). Rohmer was a talented man who transitioned from writing comedy and songs for music hall entertainment to weird, occult fiction often with an Oriental twist. There are decent author profiles here in Goodreads and elsewhere.Fu Manchu is decidedly un-politically correct, but more importantly he became an archetype for brilliant, evil, fiends bent on world domination. Yes, he is a product of his times and the stereotypes and biases of that age, but remember that Rohmer was writing popular fiction. If the magazine publishers who serialized these works did not see high sales numbers, Fu Manchu would have been a one-hit-wonder instead of an enduring series.And despite the ease that one can denigrate the product, this is no simple slam against the Orient. Fu Manchu is brilliant. He is holds or has the equivalent of four (4) Doctorates in many fields: medicine, chemistry, physics, to name but a few. He is an accomplished linguist and can match Sherlock Holmes (who is not part of these tales) disguise for disguise. He works for his country (via the Si-Fan) not only personal power and gain. He follows instructions and believes as fervently as any holier-than-thou whack job that his is the hallowed path of goodness, no matter what crimes he must commit to achieve his objectives. If ever there was a shining example for all of the No. 1s of SPECTRE or SMERSH, or Auric Goldfinger, Doctor Moriarty, or even Doctor Evil, this is the man. His evil is so pure it overwhelms those who are pure of heart and mind.And yet, like Conan Doyle before him, once the figure had outgrown his creator’s fame, Rohmer cast him aside. The first three novels came and went during 1913 through 1917 and there the series sat until 1931. Why? Well conjecture says that he decided that he wanted to write other things (and there may be written or oral evidence of this, too.) And so he did. (One might argue more successfully than Conan Doyle ever could.) But at the same time, the character had been filmed in England, a daily “comic” strip was about to start and Warner Oland was donning the mantle of evil for Paramount’s first film.In this and the next two novels, the heroes are Colonial Police Commissioner (with a Royal Roving License) Denis Nayland Smith and his friend and associate (and narrator), Dr. Petrie. Petrie is the rock against which Nayland Smith operates providing lodging and assistance whenever and wherever it is needed. Nayland Smith is tenacious, and occasionally brilliant, and has uncovered Fu Manchu and his plans in Asia and tracked him back to England, where they must defeat him. His roving commission gives him the power to request or coerce any and all support that he feels warranted.There is an obvious parallel to Holmes and Watson here even though Nayland Smith is not the deductive powerhouse that The World’s Greatest Consulting Detective is. (But neither is an idiot. Forget Nigel Bruce’s dim-witted, portrayal of Watson. Like the deerstalker cap, it isn’t really part of Conan Doyle’s writings. Watson is of course no Holmes and he loses at least one, maybe two wives, to an illness, but he’s a capable Doctor and Surgeon.) No mere mortal can seem smart when compared to the brilliance (even muted as it is here) of the leading man. But what they appear to lack in brains, these second bananas make up for it in emotion and directness (and romance as it turns out).As his chief assistant, Fu Manchu wields the incomparably lovely and mysterious, Karamaneh (which means “slave”). She and her brother were sold to the Si-Fan (the criminal organization that the Doctor works for) years before. Her real name is hidden and she is compelled to follow Fu Machu’s orders because he has her brother drugged and captive. Karamaneh is smart, she is clever, and she is seductive; all traits that she employs in carrying out her assignments. Petrie is smitten by her at first glance.Since these are among his best known works, I’m going to avoid any real summation of the plot or action. When they first appeared they were instantly popular and garnered fame and wealth for the author. As previously noted, Fu Manchu became the symbol of the evil Orient especially the threat of the “Yellow Peril” with wide enough recognition that later characters would be patterned after him: Ming the Merciless (Flash Gordon) instantly comes to mind.At the same time, in the real world, Sun Yat Sen had finally led a successful overthrow of the Qing Dynasty (1911), the Japanese had defeated a European Power (Russia) on land and sea in 1905 (only 40 short years after the Meiji Restoration and industrialization of Japan), and the unequal treaties of the Western Powers with China were still in force. But as today, jingoism trumps reality and intrigue, blood, and stereotypes sell. Just check out the opposite side’s (which ever you prefer) most vocal Talking Heads or Talk Radio meat puppets. Can we truly say that we’ve gotten better except at superficial lip-service?Since I have been reading a lot of older material, I accept that the styles, beliefs, and prejudices of the authors in their day reflect more their world than anything innate. That may be more or less true depending on the individual, but I am reading for enjoyment and diversion and I can tolerate a lot in pursuit of a good story. And, despite the rough edges (part of their appeal originally), these are good stories and Doctor Fu Manchu is a most wonderful adversary!Three (3.0) Solid Stars for the actual writing, but Four (4.0) Stars awarded for creating one of the Baddest of the Bad Guys of All Time.You can get this story for free from the Gutenberg Project site.
THE INSIDIOUS DR. FU-MANCHU. (1913). Sax Rohmer. ****.tThe four-star rating is just a way of sneakingly make you want to give this novel a try. It is important in the development of the mystery/thriller genres. If you do read it, you might even be tempted to watch some of the mediocre films adapted from the books. So...Sax Rohmer (1883-1959) was an English writer who wrote in a variety of genres, but is mostly remembered for his Fu Manchu books. His real name was Arthur Henry Saxfield Ward, a name that screamed for a change. This novel, titled “The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu” in England, was the first in this mystery series. It introduced the mysterious and all-powerful man from the Orient, bearing all kinds of arcane knowledge and wielding immense power through his network of henchmen, controlled, in many cases, by the use of drugs unknown to the physicians of Europe. Fu (let me call him that) is on a mission: he needs to either eliminate or bring over to his side the many men who would somehow interfere with his efforts towards world domination as led by the new China. We’re never actually told what his goal is, but you learn pretty quickly that you don’t want to be in his way. He is in London, where he needs to kill off some enemies to his new state and to spirit away back to China some people with technical know-how that will help China reach her desired status. He is being pursued by Nayland Smith, who has great official status in the world’s law enforcement network. Smith has been after Fu for quite a while, but has been unsuccessful thus far. He meets Dr. Petrie in the course of his investigations, and signs him up to help him on his quest. They met while Smith was investigating the murder of Sir Crichton Davey. It turns out that Davey was killed by means of “The Zayat Kiss,” one of Fu’s secret methods of killing people, using insects with a deadly bite. The two investigators are helped by a young woman, Karamanen, who is being held by Fu as a hostage/slave by means of his keeping her young brother as a hostage. She has to help Fu in his endeavors, but she will help anyone else catch him if they can assure her that her brother will be released unharmed. She and Dr. Petrie soon develop a strong friendship (which might have turned into something more if only Rohmer knew how to write about it) and she agrees to help him and Smith track him down. There are lots of killings by Fu and his henchmen (dacoits, of course) as the story progresses, all written in a later gothic style that predates and forecasts pulp fiction by a few years. In spite of the clumsy (to the modern reader) style, the story moves forward and manages to maintain tension throughout. If nothing else, you will be amazed at the clever methods Fu uses to kill people and/or escape from people on his trail. The writing is totally non politically correct for today, but you have to remember when this was written. I’d recommend that you give this a try.
Do You like book The Mystery Of Dr. Fu-Manchu (2012)?
For those interested and investigating the Fu Manchu narrative you may find the original books an interesting read if you can set aside the Yellow Peril racism; the casual sexism, and the slow pace of the books. Difficult to recommend books that are so fraught with casual racism, but this wasn't a bad experience if you have your cultural filters on. Essentially, what the reader has here is a Sherlock Holmes knock-off and a fall-out from the 1898-1901 Boxer Rebellion in China...that left many foreigners dead...though many times many more Chinese dead in its wake. If you are interested in 20th Century British Adventure Fiction and can read past the casual racism readers may enjoy this book and the series. Failing this, there are always the Christopher Lee films, the Boris Karloff 1932 flick, and the Republic movie serial: The Drums of Fu Manchu. Even there you will have to watch with your cultural filters on. Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
—David
First published in 1913, read by me over 100 years later in 2014. Yes, there are overwhelming amounts of Orientalism and obnoxious English stereotyping. For example, Dr. Fu Manchu is always the face of the "yellow threat." So the novel displays the xenophobia of the age. However, it does present a mysterious, exotic villain. The main characters are constantly failing on this adventurous chase to arrest Dr. Fu Manchu, but they do hustle the reader along in non-stop exploits of hasty detective work. If you are interested in pulp novels, early adventure stories, exotic villains - this is the novel for you.
—Nawfal
I like this book, but I feel guilty about it. It's not just that it is permeated with orientalist attitudes, but that it makes those attitudes seem less quaint and more sinister because they are reinforced here by blatant racism. It is bad enough that the villain embodies the malevolent cunning of The Inscrutable East, but it is much worse when the hero is repeatedly described as the "savior of the white race."To appreciate the book as I do--even if you feel guilty about it--it is helpful to realize that part of its inspiration lay in certain contemporary events in China that shook the confidence of the Western mind in much the same way that 9/11 would one hundred years later. Unrest in the Far East--beginning with the Boxer Rebellion in 1899 and culminating in the collapse of the last imperial dynasty in the revolution of 1911--made the colonizing nations more keenly aware of the vast size and instability of China. Many Englishmen and Americans feared that this "Yellow Peril" would soon overwhelm the West by numbers alone. If Rohmer was a sinophobe, his sinophobia was casual and calculated; his love for the legends of Egypt, Arabia and India, however, was constant and sincere. Essentially an entertainer--he began his literary career as a writer of music hall sketches and songs--Rohmer needed a Chinese super-villain, a sort of racist Bin Laden, to make a pan-Asian conspiracy credible, not for the promotion of any political agenda, but simply to revive in the jaded reader of pulp fiction the potential for fear and terror dormant in this exotic but already familiar lore. One of the particular advantages of a Chinese villain is that it enables Rohmer to transform prosaic London by evoking the dark romance of great rivers. Fu Manchu is never far from the opium dens and criminal dives of the Chinese dockside community of Limehouse, for it is there on the Thames that the Doctor takes up his residence, as he schemes and consigns the meddling agents of English law to a watery grave. Rohmer frequently makes allusions to the Nile, and the Tigris and Euphrates, thus associating contemporary London with the curses of the pharaohs and the marvels of medieval Baghdad.Fu Manchu is central to this project, but the character of Koramaneh also plays a crucial role. A beautiful Arab girl sold as a slave to Fu Manchu, she must do the doctor's bidding, but she is nonetheless in love with Petrie, the "Watson" of these adventures, and continually saves him from danger. Her ambivalence creates an ambivalence in the reader, attracting the reader to the exotic East even as Fu Manchu repels him.Rohmer, the musical hall writer, effectively performs his show biz tricks, and holds us captive in his fantastic, sinister world. I suspect much of the credit for this lies with Koramaneh: rivers may entrance us with journey and mystery, but beauty ensures our seduction.
—Bill Kerwin
