Fantomas in America

by David Lee White

Everyone thought that the Lord of Terror known as Fantmas had perished aboard the Titanic in April 1912, but they were wrong! Fantmas returns in 1917 New York, on the eve of America entering the Great War. His diabolical to capture Professor Harrington, the only man to know the secret of Eldorado and gold-making. His to rule the New World. His to spread terror! The only man who stands in his Detective Frederick Dickson.

This original Fantmas novel by David White is inspired from the long-lost 1920 American Fantmas serial written by Edward Sedwick & George Eshenfelder for the Fox Film Corporation. It is illustrated with 50 rare stills and advertising art from the serial.

392 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2007

About the author

David Lee White is a New Jersey based playwright and educator that has worked with Passage Theatre, McCarter Theatre, Dreamcatcher Rep, PlayPenn, Rider University and Drexel University as well as many other theatres and theatre programs in the NJ/NY/PA area. He was recently commissioned by the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and Passage Theatre to create the play SANISM, which will premiere in 2017. In the summer of 2015, David created the show FIVE MINUTES TO PLACES for the McCarter Theatre Education Program’s Comedy Conservatory. His play BLOOD: A COMEDY was been produced at Passage Theatre (2009) and Dreamcatcher Rep (2012). David also worked with Passage’s Artistic Director June Ballinger to create the mainstage shows TRENTON LIGHTS and PROFILES, which made use of interviews with Trenton residents on the topics of race, identity and history in Trenton, NJ. His play SLIPPERY AS SIN also received its world premiere at Passage in 2011. The one-act play WHITE BABY was originally produced at Passage Theatre, then at Emerging Artists Theatre in NY. His newest play REAL TRUE CRIME received a reading in the Hive Exposed series in NY in March of 2015, and his solo show PANTHER HOLLOW will be seen at Dreamcatcher Rep, Drexel University and the United Solo Festival in the NY in the Fall of 2015. Since 2005, he has been creating oral-history based plays with Trenton area teens based on social and cultural issues. IF I COULD IN MY HOOD I WOULD… was about inner-city gangs, FIRE GIRLS took on the issue of girl-bullying and URBAN CENTRAL examined the 1967 race riots that took place a Trenton Central High. Subsequent shows in this vein include GET OFF THE BUS and BOBASHELA. He created “Stoop Theatre” with the Trenton High drama club and created the show THIS TRENTON LIFE which was the subject an Emmy-Award nominated broadcast on PCK Media’s STATE OF THE ARTS. David Lee White is the Associate Artistic Director and Resident Playwright at Passage Theatre in Trenton. He also runs the Passage Play Lab which has aided in the development of plays by New Jersey-based playwrights. David is also the curator of the Rider University New Play Festival , an instructor at PlayPenn in Philadelphia and teaches Dramatic Analysis at Drexel University. He is currently working on the play THE FESTIAL QUARTET and the musical LIVE STREAM with singer/songwriter Sarah Donner and director/co-creator Adam Immerwahr. The piece has been workshopped twice at Bristol-Riverside Theatre as part of their “America Rising” series.

Reviews

[Dawn]

Full disclosure - my friend David White wrote this book. Still, it's awesome. It's based on a series of stories that circulated in France pre-WW1. Fantomas is a mysterious super-villain, a master of disguise and what we would now term a sociopath. His complete evilness is darkly alluring, in some ways, however, and you want him and his sworn arch-nemesis, Detective Frederick Dickson, to keep dancing around each other through several more books. The characters are drawn in the style of the source material, and the book is written as an homage to that style as well: at several points, Mr. White addresses us directly as "dear reader." The heroine, the spunky Ruth Harrington, is a shameless Mary Sue, but it fits in completely with the genre, and you wouldn't have her any other way. What could have been a simple melodrama, Mr. White laces with hints of our modern understanding of psychology, and as one of the characters falls under Fantomas' spell, it is both in keeping with the style of the book and completely grounded. Truly a fantastic read, in all senses of the word. Once I started it, I couldn't put it down.
Oh, and if you read this, you MUST read the Introduction: it sets up the story beautifully and more; it gives us a hint of what is to come.