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The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu (Fu-Manchu)Sax Rohmer
Titan Books, February 2012
ISBN: 978-0857686046
London, 1913--the era of Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, and the Invisible Man. A time of shadows, secret societies, and dens filled with opium addicts. Into this world comes the most fantastic emissary of evil society has ever known…Dr. Fu-Manchu.
The insidious doctor returns to Great Britain with his league of assassins, the dreaded Si-Fan. He seeks to subvert the realm at the highest levels, but Fu-Manchu has his own secrets--which he will protect by any means.
The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu is the second volume in Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu series--and the first full novel--featuring the clever battle between Sir Denis Nayland Smith and Fu-Manchu. There is, of course, our narrator, Dr. Petrie, and the mysterious woman returns as well: the beautiful Egyptian, Karamaneh, whose allegiance is often unclear. In fact, Smith and Petrie often are able to survive Fu Manchu's clever schemes or traps through some last minute twist, or by almost "divine" intervention by that beautiful temptress Karamaneh, for whom Petrie desires.
After a mysterious death, inspector Nayland Smith warns Petrie that Fu Manchu is back. Together they investigate and try to prevent a string of exotic murders and thwart Fu Manchu's plans. Fu-Manchu's plots involve lethal poisons, kidnappings, vicious animals, quicksand, a haunted house, rat torture, murderous minions, and torture device called the Gates of Joyful Wisdom. It's amazing how much action and adventure is packed into a novel.
The plots are standard pulp tropes, and the reader finds Fu Manchu committing murders via an assortment of cats'-paws and bizarre eastern animals, meanwhile befuddling our protagonists in various ways with assorted exotic Eastern drugs. Usually there's a beautiful and mysterious Eastern woman beguiling and/or assisting our heroes in various ways. Fu Manchu himself is always far more intelligent than the protagonists.
The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, is packed with fast-moving action and bizarre adventures which will keep the reader turning the pages. Sax Rohmer wrote the Fu Manchu stories between 1912 and the late 1950s. Rohmer's creation of the sinister, evil genius, Fu Manchu, rivals Doyle's Professor Moriarty as an icon of en evil, genius, mastermind. The Fu Manchu novels are worth the time to discover the great, intellectual evil genius who is Fu Manchu.
SAX ROHMER was the acclaimed author of the Fu Manchu series of novels. The first, The Mystery of Fu Manchu, was published in 1912 with many more following. Rohmer also wrote more traditional detective stories and supernatural horror. He died in London in 1959.
ISBN: 978-0857686046; ISBN10: 0857686046; Imprint: Titan Books; On Sale: 2/14/2012; Format: Paperback; Pages: 256; $9.95
