The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (AKA The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu) (Fu Manchu #1) (1913)

- April 16, 2023

by Sax Rohmer

Dr. Fu Manchu, the prototypical supervillain of the Yellow Peril, arrives in Britain to advance his nefarious purposes, which aren’t entirely clear at this point but seem to involve kidnapping a number of scientific specialists for transport to China.

He is presented as a new breed of reformer who wishes to crush the West and remake China into a world power.

Fortunately for Merry Olde England, Nayland Smith, an officer of the Crown with the authority to command the cooperation of any government official, and his sidekick Dr. Watson…I mean Petrie…are on hand to oppose him.

Anyone who enjoys old pulp adventures has already made peace with the backward racial attitudes of the time when they were written so it generally doesn’t bear mentioning.

Sometimes, however, these offenses are so glaring that they become particularly intrusive.

The entire premise of this series is the notion that a superior white race must guard against the crafty machinations of morally inferior Eastern hordes that are poised to swamp the West with their numbers, thereby destroying and degrading British civilization and dethroning it from its rightful place at the head of its empire.

I have no quarrel with anyone who refuses to look beyond such odious attitudes.

I, however, as a pulp lover from way back, have developed the manual dexterity to turn pages while holding my nose and the mental dexterity to abhor Sax Rohmer’s worldview while appreciating his talents as a storyteller.

Sax Rohmer

He is very skilled at evoking an atmosphere of dread and mystery, and he pulls off the contrivances necessary in a narrative filled with cliffhangers and narrow escapes with panache.

The stories that make up this book were originally published separately, and here they are just dashed together without any indication of where one ends and the next begins, making for a rather jerky reading experience.