Customer Reviews

The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

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When Nayland Smith, late of Burma, arrives on the London door-step of his friend (and our narrator) Dr. Petrie (no first name given), he reveals that he is in pursuit of a singularly evil man, "tall, lean, and feline, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan," who has come to spearhead the Yellow Peril conspiracy against the White race: the insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu.

Thus begins "The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu" (known as "The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu" in its native England) the first of a series of famous and infamous tales of one of the most famous super-villains in pulp fiction. Sax Rohmer's Fu-Manchu is evil personified: brilliant, ruthless, with a variety of weapons in his arsenal, murdering without a second thought. He is also a fictional face on an irrational, ambiguous prejudice, the Asian hordes waiting to enslave Europe and the United States. And through a series of events, Smith and Petrie (characters deliberately reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson) thwart this sinister villain, with mixed success.

As other reviewers have noted, Rohmer's work incorporates the racism prevalent in the society of the days. Taken from that prospective, "The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu" is really nothing more than a curious artifact of a less enlightened time. The modern reader has to accept that reality, or they will never be able to appreciate the book beyond that level.

And that would be a shame, for setting aside the racism, Rohmer is a good storyteller. In particular, Rohmer has a knack for atmosphere. There's a creepiness that hangs over the novel, as Fu-Manchu employs various bits of weirdness to carry out murders, including insects, poison gases, and spooky men who climb walls and howl in the night. Rohmer knows exactly what adjective use to describe Smith and Petrie's mounting horror at each new gimmick Fu-Manchu employs, creating some legitimate tension. A scene where Smith tells Petrie to run for his life is quite gripping, perhaps because it is so easy to imagine oneself in that position. Rohmer also has a strong sense for action, as our heroes find themselves in various physical fights, gun battles, and explosions. This aspect of Rohmer's writing certainly helps, since his dialogue is of the overwrought Victorian dime novel variety (naturally), and the character development is enough to make the plot work, but no more than that. Also, while the plot is entertaining, it's episodic, so don't expect too many twists or turns, or any real sophistication in the narrative. It's simply Smith and Petrie running to this event and that event, trying to thwart Fu-Manchu.

It's hard to be objective about this book and this character. On the one hand, Fu-Manchu is a great and scary villain. On the other hand, Fu-Manchu represents the ability to be completely racist without rationality. Ultimately, I think simply enjoying the ride while acknowledging the realities of this series is the pragmatic approach. For, the first novel is an exciting, action-packed, and chilling romp of pulpiness that is completely enjoyable.

This book introduces the characters and begins the course of events that sustain the first three novels of the series. Nayland Smith, Special Commisioner, having detected signs of organized insurgency in the Far East, surprises his good friend Dr. Petrie one quiet evening in London. He astounds the good doctor with tales of Eastern terrors and intrigue revolving around the figure of a mysterious Chinese doctor named Fu-Manchu, the evil genius at the center of a plot to subjugate the white races to oriental domination. As the plot unfolds, we, along with these two stout-hearted Englishmen, encounter many of Dr. Fu-Manchu's terrifying agents, including numerous representatives of mysterious Asiatic strangler cults, and frequent evidence of the Doctor's evil genius in the shape of the deadly drugs he has produced and the lethal bugs, apes and fungi he has bred. We also move in and out of opium dens, subterranean passageways, and loathsome dungeons in the very heart of the modern metropolis and in the peaceful bosom of the English countryside. The irresitibly seductive Egyptian slave girl Karamaneh, Fu-Manchu's most dangerous creature, completes the cast of characters. To reveal more, at this point, would be to spoil the pleasure and the surprise of the reader's first encounter with the thrilling and enchanting world of 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.

While 'The Insidious Dr. Fun Manchu' was first published in novel form in 1913, I found him to be a refreshing villain. A cruel, ruthless criminal mind who happened to be the main character of the book. He is, after all, the title character. He was not the Hero's punching bag. Far from it. Most of the time this Master of Evil WON.
You can see the ghost of this great character within every evil genius of a James Bond film, but also you can find him being used by today's writers. He is in Kim Newman's 'Anno Dracula' and is even a major character in Alan Moore's graphic novel, 'The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen'.
I WILL get as many of the other books as I can get my hands on!

...that it is impossible to take a novel that was very much of it's time, 1913, and look at it with the attitudes and manners of today. Yes, it most certainly is not politically correct and why should it be? Political correctness is a fairly modern invention and keep in mind, we're talking England 1913. The Boxer rebellion was only a few decades old and there was some paranoia about the Chinese. I'm not saying that racism is right, it's horrid but again, remember the attitudes of the time.

From an adventure reader's viewpoint, a very entertaining book indeed. I enjoyed the quick pace and the strong female character. (If Rohmer was such a racist, would he have Dr. Petrie in love with an Arab woman?)Fu Manchu is facinating.

I'll end this review by quoting the introduction to this edition of the book: To paraphrase, the Chinese as written by Sax Rohmer are no more "real" than the Orcs of JRR Tolkiens Lord of the Rings. Keep that in mind and you'll have fun with this facinating period piece.

Dr. Petrie is visited by long-time friend Nayland Smith and hurled into adventure. Smith, recently returned from British Burma, is on the trail of mysterious and evil Chinese scientist/political leader Dr. Fu Manchu. Fu Manchu and his fellows will stop at nothing to prevent Europe's leading students of the orient from revealing his secrets, and the plot to overturn the game of Empire as it was played in the early 20th Century to put China at the top of the world.

Fu Manchu has limited resources--a few practicers of Thuggee and Dacoits, but his scientific skills make up for this lack. He has access to rare poisons, secret gasses, trained monkies, and control of a beautiful woman willing to lead men to their doom. This woman, however, turns out to be a key to Smith's investigation when she falls for Petrie, saving him--and Smith--from certain death at the hands of Fu Manchu.

The opening novel in the long-running Fu Manchu series (Rohmer wrote approximately 14) is well constructed and fast-moving with Smith and Petrie always a step behind the brilliant Fu Manchu, yet willing to continue with plucky British spirit. Author Sax Rohmer shows a grudging respect for the evil Fu Manchu, but reflects the fears of his time--that the 'yellow peril' is fearsome indeed, and that a clash of civilization between the west and the inscrutible east is under weigh. That Fu Manchu's nation was largely occupied by western armies, forced to admit the Opium that poisoned some of China's finest minds, and that much of the rest of the east was a part of the British Empire added only the slightest tinge of sympathy for the evil Fu Manchu.

At a time when China is set to become the world's leading economy, fears of the 'yellow peril' are increasingly common and I felt it worthwhile to give THE INSIDIOUS DR. FU MANCHU another look. I thought Rohmer's writing held up well and that this story, unlike some of his later works which rely much too extensively on coincidence and luck. All in all, FU MANCHU makes for interesting reading an serves as a bit of a time machine into the mind of the British man-in-the-streets who saw the British Empire at its greatest extent, yet felt ever-threatened by the mysterious east.

Sax Rohmer's work has been compared to Arthur Conan Doyle's often enough that I felt compelled to check it out, and discover more about Fu-Manchu beyond what I already knew about the character (that a certain kind of 1970's moustache was named after him).

At one time the West was terrified of "Young China", and the forces at work in China that could conceivably have led to a radical alteration of the world's power structures. The Chinese were the bad guys because they were "inscrutable" (love that word!), and therefore frightening.

Without a doubt, the view of the author is rather dated, in his obvious bias against the Chinese (or at least they were handy villains for him). His constant allusions to the "Yellow Peril" and the unspeakable dangers posed to the white race by the yellow is in keeping with the times (1913), but a bit overboard nevertheless.

The book is more of a series of sketchy, running battles between the sinister Fu-Manchu and hero Smith rather than a standard, cohesive narrative. This should come as no surprise since the author cobbled together several of his Fu-Manchu short stories into this one single volume. However, the results of this process are mixed, and not totally effective. Not that it really matters, since this novel was successful enough to call for more and better stories with the homicidal genius.

This particular edition (Dover Classic Mysteries), is very inexpensive, and well worth the price of admission to experience the debut of Fu-Manchu, and to learn something about the social attitudes of the time in which he was created.

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!

Several weeks ago, I re-read and reviewed The Young Trailers, the first in an 8-volume series about the Kentucky frontier during the time of the American Revolution begun by Joseph Altsheler in the first decade of the twentieth century. My father enjoyed the books as a young lad, and he introduced me to the book and the series in my pre-teen years during the 1950s. I was enthralled by them then, and remained enthralled by THE YOUNG TRAILERS during by return visit. Some things hold their value. And, yes, one can occasionally recapture the magic of an earlier experience despite the intervening years.

However, a re-reading of THE INSIDIOUS DR. FU-MANCHU demonstrated to me - if such needed demonstration - the old saw that "you can't go home again." Well, not always, anyway.

This book, penned in 1913, was the first in the Fu-Manchu series by author Sax Rohmer, the nom de plume of Arthur H. S. Ward. This initial installment, too, captured my reader's attention in my formative years and I ultimately devoured the entire set.

In THE INSIDIOUS DR. FU-MANCHU, a colonial police commissioner of the British Empire, Denis Nayland Smith, abruptly bursts onto the London scene - specifically, into the study of his old friend, Dr. John Petrie - having just arrived from Burma to save the lives of several notable British and American citizens from certain death at the hands of the arch villain, Dr. Fu-Manchu, the point man for a shadowy Chinese conspiracy to bring down the Empire and, perhaps also, the United States. (Rohmer kept strategic specificities of the threat hazy, but, presumably, the Empire's Far Eastern jewel-in-the-crown colony - India - is on the front line of exposure. This is, after all, shortly before the First World War and the Empire is at its height.)

As one follows Smith and Petrie as they scurry about the British capital coping with Fu-Manchu's devilish machinations, the reader will perhaps be reminded of a similar heroic duo, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, as the latter two engaged wits with Moriarty. As Arthur Conan Doyle published his first Holmes adventure in 1887, one might suspect that Rohmer was hoping to cash-in on the demonstrated popularity of such pulp thrillers featuring a head honcho and sidekick. To my impression, Smith was just as energetically driven as Holmes to come to grips with his nemesis but his deductive abilities were less impressive. On the other hand, Petrie seemed a bit quicker on the uptake than Watson.

The Fu-Manchu series has been considered racist. Compared to the Red Menace of the recent Cold War era when "red" referred to a political creed to which any color of man could adhere, the "yellow" in Yellow Peril refers solely to the Chinese. Actually, the discomfiture and hand-wringing this may cause the Politically Correct just makes the book and the series somewhat endearing to me. I mean, get over it. I can see, however, why the PC might be offended by such passages as:

"Invest him (Fu-Manchu) with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race ..."

"We are dealing with a Chinaman, with the incarnate essence of Eastern subtlety ..."

"... we yet were cut off, were in the hands of Far Easterns, to some extent in the power of members of that most inscrutably mysterious race, the Chinese."

"But God help the victim of Chinese mercy!"

"No white man, I honestly believe, appreciates the unemotional cruelty of the Chinese."

"... we who knew the reality of the danger knew that a veritable octopus had fastened upon England - a yellow octopus whose head was that of Dr. Fu-Manchu ..."

Fifty years after having read THE INSIDIOUS DR. FU-MANCHU the first time, I was now unimpressed after the second go. If this had been my first exposure to the series, I certainly wouldn't continue with it. (OK, so I've become jaded.) Character development is virtually non-existent and the plot is simply a series of frantically paced action sequences that achieve almost a comic, Keystone Cops flavor. Indeed, one thing that's evident soon enough is that if Smith had been willing to gun down Fu-Manchu on sight and ask questions later, the series would've ended roughly half-way through the first book. But that would've been distressingly un-British and not very sporting, old chap.

The return to a by gone era immerses the reader in a time and culture that demands your attention as the story unfolds with the ever present danger from any direction, at any time, in any place that may be the moment the mysterious Dr strikes.
Dr Fu Manchau is a legendary figure, both a villian and a patriot (in his own mind)in conflict with an equally determined opponent, Nayland Smith. The author winds a serpentine journey as the battle royal continues between these two implacable foes. Who will emerge with victory? Only the reader can decide as you will follow the adventures to a climax, or will you. Read and find out.