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Fu Manchu #1-3
Fu Manchu: The Insidious Dr Fu Manchu / The Return of Dr Fu Manchu / Hand of Fu Manchu
The Return of the Ultimate Villain. A new collection of three novels in one volume featuring Sax Rohmer's most famous character Dr Fu Manchu.
528 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
March 14, 2008
The proto-type novels of the mysterious evil 'orient.' Fu-Manchu is sort of the Asian cousin of France's Fantomas. A man who has a passion to do evil, and evil he does well. Smith is his arch-enemy good guy who goes out of his way to fight the evil genius. Total pulp writing, but had an affect I think on the Beat movement here in the United States. In many ways it's an exotic world - with some drug taking, etc that captures a lot of the imagination of young Beats everywhere.
September 12, 2007
People keep telling me how racist these novels are, because it's written by an Englishman, and has a Chinese villain at the center.
I wonder how many of those have actually read the Fu Manchu novels. I have read this omnibus, and noticed something that even Rohmer himself might not have been aware of: the supposed hero of the piece, Nayland-Smith, is worse than the man he hunts. Fu Manchu may be a stereotypical mad scientist on a quest for world domination (who happens to be Chinese), but he is also an honorable man who can be trusted to keep his word.
Nayland-Smith, on the other hand, lies, cheats and sends his associates to their death without a second's hesitation if he thinks that by sacrificing one of them, he can save his own precious hide.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather trust Fu Manchu to not stab me in the back (at least if I managed to make him promise it) than Nayland-Smith (who would do it even if he did promise not to).
Beyond that, these novels are unfortunately only a moderately interesting sample of pulp literature.
I wonder how many of those have actually read the Fu Manchu novels. I have read this omnibus, and noticed something that even Rohmer himself might not have been aware of: the supposed hero of the piece, Nayland-Smith, is worse than the man he hunts. Fu Manchu may be a stereotypical mad scientist on a quest for world domination (who happens to be Chinese), but he is also an honorable man who can be trusted to keep his word.
Nayland-Smith, on the other hand, lies, cheats and sends his associates to their death without a second's hesitation if he thinks that by sacrificing one of them, he can save his own precious hide.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather trust Fu Manchu to not stab me in the back (at least if I managed to make him promise it) than Nayland-Smith (who would do it even if he did promise not to).
Beyond that, these novels are unfortunately only a moderately interesting sample of pulp literature.
January 16, 2018
I read all three of these books (in individual editions) many years back. Yes, they each have their weak points (at one point, an assassin is prevented from killing the unaware heroes when a tree branch falls on him) and the racism is blatant. But we can't ignore the good parts: the series introduces a great character and many great ideas. As the series continued, the writing and plotting improved (especially with the fifth book). In time, Rohmer gained considerable respect for the Chinese people and culture and it showed in his later books. If read with an objective mind, one could interpret Fu Manchu as being the character who wants to bring about world peace (although willing to kill and kidnap to do it) and Nayland-Smith is the real villain: a rabid racist trying to stop him.
October 16, 2009
Sax Rohmer was the pen name of the English writer Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward (1883-1959), a prolific producer of pulp fiction and comedy sketches for music hall performers. He was one of the highest paid and most successful writers of the twenties and thirties, due largely to his Fu Manchu series.
Reissued in two fat volumes by Allison & Busby after being out of print for years, the Fu Manchu stories have taken on an unexpected new edge recently. Give Osama bin Laden long, tapering fingernails, rearrange his facial hair, slant his eyes and shove him into a flowing Chinese silk number, and you have the beast from the East in person. It’s all there: the evil genius bent on world domination, the armies of deadheads whose only dream in life is to incinerate themselves and others at his slightest command, all the fanaticism and ruthlessness. And to top it all, nobody knows where or how he’ll strike next. Déjà vu or what? After footage of the latest terrorist atrocity, I half expect to see credits rolling, and a sinister image of Fu Manchu intoning ‘The world has not seen the last of me!’ just like in the old Hammer films with Christopher Lee.
It’s the early years of the twentieth century, then, and Fu Manchu has been busily setting up what we would now call his terrorist cell in London, heart of Empire, its object being to destabilise the government by bumping off key ministers and top civil servants. He is assisted by his beautiful but deadly daughter Fa Lo See. Only the stiff-upper-lipped Nayland Smith, an Orientalist recently returned from under-cover work in Burma, and his sidekick Dr Petrie are in a position to foil his plans. The official state machinery is hopelessly inadequate against such skulduggery.
The ‘Yellow Peril’ had a high profile at the time, with China being regarded as a relentlessly expanding power, wrapped in mystery and unfamiliar with cricket. It was Yellows rather than Reds under the bed in those days, and the Western intelligence agencies were sorely ignorant as to the nature and intentions of the new threat. China was a land of Dowager Empresses and exotic dynasties, a parallel civilisation that the British Empire was rubbing up the wrong way. The British had been making the familiar Superpower mistake of believing that opposition to their rule was incomprehensible and utterly unacceptable, and had been recently shaken (but not stirred) by the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, a popular uprising against foreign influence, in which Western goods were destroyed and missionaries slaughtered. There’s just no pleasing some people.
Nayland Smith has a handful of Scotland Yard’s finest to sporadically assist him, but they retain a sense of fair play that has no place against such an adversary. Think of Dixon of Dock Green telling an al Qaeda suicide bomber he’s been nicked, or suggesting to the Taliban that they move along now. Fu Manchu uses unknown poisons, deadly insects, oriental beauties and glamorous drugs in pursuit of his goals. But despite the odds, you just know who’s going to come out on top in the end, and that for all his bloody little victories Fu Manchu will eventually come a cropper. He, like bin Laden, like Hitler, like Saddam, has no sense of humour. He takes himself far too seriously. Like despots, actors and rock stars believing in their own publicity, he is clearly riding for a fall, and Nayland Smith will be there to give him the final push, before strolling off to his London club with Dr Petrie for a well-deserved whisky and soda.
Reissued in two fat volumes by Allison & Busby after being out of print for years, the Fu Manchu stories have taken on an unexpected new edge recently. Give Osama bin Laden long, tapering fingernails, rearrange his facial hair, slant his eyes and shove him into a flowing Chinese silk number, and you have the beast from the East in person. It’s all there: the evil genius bent on world domination, the armies of deadheads whose only dream in life is to incinerate themselves and others at his slightest command, all the fanaticism and ruthlessness. And to top it all, nobody knows where or how he’ll strike next. Déjà vu or what? After footage of the latest terrorist atrocity, I half expect to see credits rolling, and a sinister image of Fu Manchu intoning ‘The world has not seen the last of me!’ just like in the old Hammer films with Christopher Lee.
It’s the early years of the twentieth century, then, and Fu Manchu has been busily setting up what we would now call his terrorist cell in London, heart of Empire, its object being to destabilise the government by bumping off key ministers and top civil servants. He is assisted by his beautiful but deadly daughter Fa Lo See. Only the stiff-upper-lipped Nayland Smith, an Orientalist recently returned from under-cover work in Burma, and his sidekick Dr Petrie are in a position to foil his plans. The official state machinery is hopelessly inadequate against such skulduggery.
The ‘Yellow Peril’ had a high profile at the time, with China being regarded as a relentlessly expanding power, wrapped in mystery and unfamiliar with cricket. It was Yellows rather than Reds under the bed in those days, and the Western intelligence agencies were sorely ignorant as to the nature and intentions of the new threat. China was a land of Dowager Empresses and exotic dynasties, a parallel civilisation that the British Empire was rubbing up the wrong way. The British had been making the familiar Superpower mistake of believing that opposition to their rule was incomprehensible and utterly unacceptable, and had been recently shaken (but not stirred) by the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, a popular uprising against foreign influence, in which Western goods were destroyed and missionaries slaughtered. There’s just no pleasing some people.
Nayland Smith has a handful of Scotland Yard’s finest to sporadically assist him, but they retain a sense of fair play that has no place against such an adversary. Think of Dixon of Dock Green telling an al Qaeda suicide bomber he’s been nicked, or suggesting to the Taliban that they move along now. Fu Manchu uses unknown poisons, deadly insects, oriental beauties and glamorous drugs in pursuit of his goals. But despite the odds, you just know who’s going to come out on top in the end, and that for all his bloody little victories Fu Manchu will eventually come a cropper. He, like bin Laden, like Hitler, like Saddam, has no sense of humour. He takes himself far too seriously. Like despots, actors and rock stars believing in their own publicity, he is clearly riding for a fall, and Nayland Smith will be there to give him the final push, before strolling off to his London club with Dr Petrie for a well-deserved whisky and soda.
June 15, 2011
The first book in the volume, The Mystery of Dr Fu Manchu, was, I think, the best of the three in this omnibus edition. Introducing the arch-rivals Fu Manchu and Dennis Nayland Smith, together with Smith's sidekick Dr Petrie, in exciting and mysterious fashion. Set in England, the locales are nonetheless exotic (of course, England might be exotic to you anyway, if you don't live here): London's Chinatown, full of dank opium dens next to a dirty River Thames, equally full with strangely mutilated corpses; town houses occupied by larger-than-life hunter/explorers and packed with plundered artefacts; country mansions where invisible death lurks in the shrubbery!
The second, The Devil Doctor, more obviously showed that these stories were first serialised in magazines. Enjoyable in an episodic manner, but the plot didn't hang together so well. I can't really remember much of the story already, but it was definitely good reading at the time!
The final book, The Si-Fan Mysteries, improves somewhat on the second. Already the incidents are starting to show a certain familiarity, but that's actually part of the charm - you know roughly what you're getting, so it's proper escapist, don't-have-to-think-too-much fun. Some nice atmospheric stuff in this one, and the mandarin Ki-Ming seems like he might actually be a match for the Devil Doctor!
I suppose something must be said about charges of racism - firstly, it's foolish to judge the mores of another time by our own. It's most unlikely the books would see print in their present form if first published now, and that's as it should be. At the time, however, the cultural stereotypes were mainstream and Rohmer shouldn't be overly criticised for not pre-empting the general change in outlook that would come many decades later. The stereotypes, when used, are really just a shorthand so that the action can keep going without excessive explanatory narrative. Rohmer's purpose is not a racist one and there are stereotypical stock characters, both good and bad, from east and west in the books. Crucially, the narrator, Dr Petrie, falls in love with and marries an eastern woman, not a likely plot device if racism and white supremacy was the sub-text.
Put these things in their historical context and then go with the flow.
The second, The Devil Doctor, more obviously showed that these stories were first serialised in magazines. Enjoyable in an episodic manner, but the plot didn't hang together so well. I can't really remember much of the story already, but it was definitely good reading at the time!
The final book, The Si-Fan Mysteries, improves somewhat on the second. Already the incidents are starting to show a certain familiarity, but that's actually part of the charm - you know roughly what you're getting, so it's proper escapist, don't-have-to-think-too-much fun. Some nice atmospheric stuff in this one, and the mandarin Ki-Ming seems like he might actually be a match for the Devil Doctor!
I suppose something must be said about charges of racism - firstly, it's foolish to judge the mores of another time by our own. It's most unlikely the books would see print in their present form if first published now, and that's as it should be. At the time, however, the cultural stereotypes were mainstream and Rohmer shouldn't be overly criticised for not pre-empting the general change in outlook that would come many decades later. The stereotypes, when used, are really just a shorthand so that the action can keep going without excessive explanatory narrative. Rohmer's purpose is not a racist one and there are stereotypical stock characters, both good and bad, from east and west in the books. Crucially, the narrator, Dr Petrie, falls in love with and marries an eastern woman, not a likely plot device if racism and white supremacy was the sub-text.
Put these things in their historical context and then go with the flow.
February 22, 2018
Foiling Fu Manchu!!!
The first three of Sax Rohmer’s vintage tales about the diabolical Chinese super-villain are packed with suspense and intrigue as British Inspector Nayland Smith waged a never-ending war with Fu Manchu while his close friend and ally chronicles his hair-raising escapades. This is thrilling literature of the first order!
The first three of Sax Rohmer’s vintage tales about the diabolical Chinese super-villain are packed with suspense and intrigue as British Inspector Nayland Smith waged a never-ending war with Fu Manchu while his close friend and ally chronicles his hair-raising escapades. This is thrilling literature of the first order!
September 6, 2017
The Fu Manchu novels gave us an immortal villain and inspired some entertaining movies. I can't say much for the books. They are dull reading at best.
January 14, 2022
Dr. Fu-Manchu is a great arch nemesis.
January 27, 2024
Rohmers novels are often dismissed as merely pulp fiction but the sophistication and eloquence of the writing puts it on par with the Sherlock Holmes novels in this regard.
January 24, 2021
A collection of the first three of Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu books. These stories generate some controversy and it is appropriate to address it. Are the books anti-Chinese and racist against Asian people? Yes. At the same time, it's important to remember that at this point in history the Boxer Rebellion had happened in China only a few years before the first Fu Manchu book was published, and so it can be argued these books may reflect social fears and concerns in the British Empire (it was still the Empire back then) of that time.
While there are negatives about the book and the author's leanings, the writing itself is action packed and the main antagonist, Fu Manchu, does make for a powerful figure. Upon reading these stories, it can easily be seen why Fu Manchu as a character has withstood the test of time; he is clever, cultured, with a powerful force of will. He's smarter than the protagonists, and the first three books have a mixture of successes and failures in Fu Manchu's plots. In these books, a person could see inspirations for James Bond and Bond's villains like Dr. No.
These books are fun, and action packed despite the negatives. I would have given them 4 stars, but the third story had a horrible amount of typos; letters missing, etc. Maybe that came from publisher, maybe that is Rohmer directly. Either way, 3 stars is still a solid B in my rating. Any future Fu Manchu books I find I may pick up in another fashion to see if they also suffer typo problems.
While there are negatives about the book and the author's leanings, the writing itself is action packed and the main antagonist, Fu Manchu, does make for a powerful figure. Upon reading these stories, it can easily be seen why Fu Manchu as a character has withstood the test of time; he is clever, cultured, with a powerful force of will. He's smarter than the protagonists, and the first three books have a mixture of successes and failures in Fu Manchu's plots. In these books, a person could see inspirations for James Bond and Bond's villains like Dr. No.
These books are fun, and action packed despite the negatives. I would have given them 4 stars, but the third story had a horrible amount of typos; letters missing, etc. Maybe that came from publisher, maybe that is Rohmer directly. Either way, 3 stars is still a solid B in my rating. Any future Fu Manchu books I find I may pick up in another fashion to see if they also suffer typo problems.
April 19, 2016
Sax Rohmer was a master of the penny dreadful (although his stories are much better than that description implies), particularly when it came to evoking "atmosphere" and especially that of sinister dives in the east end of London where his brilliant scheming mastermind, Dr. Fu Manchu might have made his latest base from which to plot the downfall of Western civilization. Always on the verge of pulling of the great coup, Fu Manchu is endlessly foiled by the dynamic duo of Commissioner Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie, who bear more than a passing resemblance to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (and also to Batman and Robin in the never to be forgotten 60s TV series - like the caped crusaders, Smith and Petrie are always flinging themselves into a trap set by Fu Manchu from which they cannot possibly escape a fate worse than death, only, of course, to escape by some cunning sleight of hand). The plots are not intricate, the dialogue wooden (and stereotypically racist, but hey it was 1920, and the brightest mind in the stories is, after all, Chinese), but Rohmer was a master of setting a dark mood, in which you could almost feel the yellow London fog penetrating a room, hear the rats scratching at the wainscoting and smell the tobacco as Smith lit his cracked pipe. And I bow to anyone who, like Rohmer, is able to use the word "chiaroscuro" in describing a scene (which I'm determined to do).
January 16, 2011
Sax Rohmer is that weird thing - a bad writer of genius. Like a lot of pulp, it's really about atmosphere. And of course they are "racist" by modern standards, but what that doesn't tell you is Fu Manchu is really the hero. He is the really evil bad guy but he KEEPS HIS WORD (which in the old-style British world view Rohmer was writing in, was like the absolutely pukka 100% sign of a true gent and good egg). And as the books go on, Rohmer's sneaking sympathy for him becomes more obvious, until by the Fifties he's battling against Communism.
The fault of Sax Rohmer's books is when you look back on them you can't tell them apart - you can hardly remember which one was which. But they're still a pleasure to read.
The fault of Sax Rohmer's books is when you look back on them you can't tell them apart - you can hardly remember which one was which. But they're still a pleasure to read.
November 12, 2015
This omnibus details the first three forays of the sinister, but brilliant, Dr Fu Manchu into the UK.
These three stories, narrated by Dr Petrie, tell of his, and Nayland Smith's efforts to foil Fu Manchu's efforts to create a "New China" that is one free both of colonial and republican influences.
The stories are old fashioned, written in the second decade of the twentieth century, and as such reflect the prejudice of that era. Fu Manchu himself, however, is repeatedly shown to be vastly more intelligent than, and as honourable as, his opponents.
With that in mind, these are a very enjoyable trio of adventure stories and well worth a read if for no other reason than their introduction of such an influential literary figure.
These three stories, narrated by Dr Petrie, tell of his, and Nayland Smith's efforts to foil Fu Manchu's efforts to create a "New China" that is one free both of colonial and republican influences.
The stories are old fashioned, written in the second decade of the twentieth century, and as such reflect the prejudice of that era. Fu Manchu himself, however, is repeatedly shown to be vastly more intelligent than, and as honourable as, his opponents.
With that in mind, these are a very enjoyable trio of adventure stories and well worth a read if for no other reason than their introduction of such an influential literary figure.
June 10, 2017
2016 year long book. More amusing than entertaining. So much repetition across the stories contained in this omnibus that it felt like it read the same thing over and over again.
Also, a bit disappointed that there wasn't more focus on Fu Manchu himself given the prominence of him as the titular character. The stories mainly focused on the ineptitude on his primary adversaries, Smith and Petrie, through their attempts to capture the elusive villain.
Also, a bit disappointed that there wasn't more focus on Fu Manchu himself given the prominence of him as the titular character. The stories mainly focused on the ineptitude on his primary adversaries, Smith and Petrie, through their attempts to capture the elusive villain.
November 29, 2008
I love pulp's weird vulnerability. And this is really that.
August 10, 2014
So far, pretty good.
February 1, 2024
Yes, this is very dated. It is very racist. But a better evil megalomaniac villain has yet to be conceived. Just read it with awareness and the hindsight knowledge that these were different times.
Read
August 23, 2008isbn,original
July 1, 2011
Fabulous writing of it's period. Appallingly racist by modern standards though
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