The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

_The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu_, republished by Dover Publications, is an American edition of the first book of Sax Rohmer (a pseudonym for the author Arthur Sarsfield Ward (1883-1959)), published in America as _The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu_ (1913) and in England as _The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu_. Sax Rohmer (a pseudonym meaning "blade roamer") published these stories of a Chinese criminal mastermind in magazines in America and England before cobbling them together into book form as they appear here. These stories detail the exploits of the devil doctor, Dr. Fu-Manchu, a criminal mastermind of Chinese extraction, and part of the Young China movement, seeking to destroy the white race. Fu-Manchu is described as "Imagine a person, tall, lean, and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect. . . . Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man." In the book, Fu-Manchu heads a Chinese criminal organization and operates behind the front of opium dens and uses dacoits as henchmen. The story is based upon many of the stereotypes about the Chinese people popular at the time, regarding them as cunning and nefarious, and the imminent threat of the "Yellow Peril" against the white race and is certainly unlikely to please the politically correct. Fu-Manchu makes use of many secret means to attack his foes, including the Zayat kiss, the call of Siva, and deadly elixirs which enable him to control life and death, as well as fungal extractions which allow for him to cause madness. Fu-Manchu also makes use of a beautiful Arabian (Oriental) slave girl, Karamaneh, who serves him so as to prevent him from harming her helpless brother Aziz. The heroes of the story include the narrator Dr. Petrie and Nayland Smith, recently returned from Burma and an active servant of king and country. The story mostly takes place in and around London and the Thames river, while the heroes try to capture the mad doctor and prevent him from doing further harm. However, the doctor always escapes their grasp. Dr. Petrie ends up falling under the spell of the beautiful Karamaneh and will attempt to aid her so she can finally free herself and her brother from the devil doctor. As the heroes track the doctor as he murders and causes mayhem, they must fear for their lives as he follows them closely with his evil dacoit henchmen. This story is a fairly interesting one which shows us a picture of the Orientals as seen by an Englishman of the late Nineteenth Century. The character of Dr. Fu-Manchu and the mystery surrounding him will appear again and again in all the writings of Sax Rohmer. He remains a classic villain and his exploits provide an entertaining yarn for those who read of them.

I must say that I blush in confessing that reading this book gave me the chills. One way to gauge a story is by the force of antagonism raised against the hero. In this book, the force of antagonism is perfectly ominous, artfully deadly, and rancidly horrific--the Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu rouses high expectations, and chapter after chapter it exceeds them. Everything that you would want from a mystery/suspense/action/adventure novel is here in this book, and it is here in high doses.Brimming with intrigue, romance, mystery, murder, mayhem, zaps, traps, pitfalls, poisons, hair-breadth escapes and miraculous revivals, the 'Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu' grabs you from the start and doesn't let you go 'til the end, and by that time you're so intoxicated from the deep pleasure this book has provided that you either A: Read this book again, and/or B: Yearn to get your hands on copies of the next books in the series (which, unfortunately, are hard to come by these days).Have I mentioned that this book gave me the chills? Chills, thrills, and the greatest of heart-pounding, nail-biting, deviously sublime episodes of reading you'll ever have. Great fun!

It's amazing how much action Sax Rohmer crams into this short, 192-page book. In it, Commissioner Nayland Smith and his cohort, Dr. Petrie, travel around London trying to rescue various chaps from murder, kidnapping, memory loss and assorted attacks perpetrated by the evil Chinese mastermind, Dr. Fu Manchu. The pace of the book is quite breathless, and before all is said and done, we have dealt with poisonous centipedes, opium dens, trapdoors, memory drugs, mummies, poison gas, thugees and dacoits, ship raids, hashish, zombies, poison mushrooms, swamp adder drugs and on and on. Like I said, Rohmer throws a lot into this one, all for the pleasure of the adventure-loving reader. Who cares if it's not PC? This is a ripper of a yarn, as they used to say, and a nice intro to the other 13 books in the Fu Manchu series.

This is only one of many of Sax Rohmers amazing novels. It is very unfortunate that they are not more readily enjoyable because although they are not politically correct, they can be enjoyed by readers of all ages.

Two Brittish chaps try to stop evil before it happens. They explore many unknown areas of london circa 1910. Visit an opium den, are drugged with cannabis indica and almost killed by deathly fungi spores. Fu Manchu has many disguises it's a great adventure story that explores underground hideouts!