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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part Nine – “The Six Gates”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part Nine – “The Six Gates”

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fumanchu4“The Six Gates” was the ninth installment of Sax Rohmer’s Fu-Manchu and Company. The story was first published in Collier’s on October 23, 1915 and was later expanded to comprise Chapters 27-30 of the second Fu-Manchu novel, The Devil Doctor first published in the UK in 1916 by Cassell and in the US by McBride & Nast under the variant title, The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

face-fu-manchu-poster1The story opens, like many early Rohmer tales, with the unexpected arrival of a late night visitor. In this instance, Smith and Petrie are preparing for the raid on the Gables when Aziz, Karamaneh’s brother, turns up at Petrie’s door. While initially skeptical of trusting him, both men are quickly won over by the young man’s tale of how Karamaneh was abducted by Fu-Manchu’s minions shortly after he and his sister returned home to Cairo; how Karamaneh was rendered amnesiac by a drug administered by Dr. Fu-Manchu; and how Aziz followed their trail from Cairo to Rangoon to London in his desperate quest to free his sister from slavery. Smith and Petrie leave Aziz in police custody as they join Inspector Weymouth for the police raid on the Gables.

Smith and Petrie foolishly separate from the Scotland Yard men and encounter Karamaneh in the house. She warns them that they are walking into a trap, but Smith disregards her warning and he and Petrie step right into a trapdoor hidden behind a curtain. They recover consciousness to find Dr. Fu-Manchu gloating over their blundering incompetence. He mocks them for being inferior to children who learn from experience to fear fire lest they be burned a second time. Presently coming to the point, Fu-Manchu explains that Smith is to be tortured with the Six Gates of Joyful Wisdom while Petrie, his devoted friend, is provided with a samurai sword to end Smith’s sufferings if he dares.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part Eight – “The Fiery Hand”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part Eight – “The Fiery Hand”

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fiery-hand“The Fiery Hand” was the eighth installment of Sax Rohmer’s Fu-Manchu and Company.   The story was first published in Collier’s on September 25, 1915 and was later expanded to comprise Chapters 24-26 of the second Fu-Manchu novel, The Devil Doctor first published in the UK in 1916 by Cassell and in the US by McBride & Nast under the variant title, The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

8073861This serves as Rohmer’s variation on the haunted house story and mines the same territory as countless Sherlock Holmes pastiches where the reader is assured that the detective will arrive at a rational explanation because the other characters are convinced that the mysterious goings-on must be of supernatural origin from the start. That said, the story is an excellent one and finds Rohmer in fine form.

Inspector Weymouth calls on Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie to enlist Smith’s aid in investigating the Gables, a property in Hampstead that appears to have been haunted for the past two years. The previous owners, a Quaker family who lived at the house for over forty years sold it after manifestations of a fiery hand holding a flaming dagger appeared. They said nothing of the incident at the time for fear of not being able to sell the property.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part Seven – “Cragmire Tower”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part Seven – “Cragmire Tower”

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3306898731_67e5eb0109“Cragmire Tower” was the seventh installment of Sax Rohmer’s Fu-Manchu and Company. The story was first published in Collier’s on July 17, 1915 and was later expanded to comprise Chapters 21-23 of the second Fu-Manchu novel, The Devil Doctor first published in the UK in 1916 by Cassell and in the US by McBride & Nast under the variant title, The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

returnPicking up where the last installment left off, the story gets underway with Inspector Weymouth’s fruitless raid on J. Salaman’s antique shop which has now been abandoned by Fu-Manchu and his gang. Nayland Smith rapidly informs Petrie that the American adventurer and psychic investigator Kegan Van Roon is completing a book about his experiences in China where he ran afoul of a fanatical group in Ho-Nan. Van Roon has leased Cragmire Tower in Somersetshire to finish his book. Naturally, Smith believes Van Roon’s life is in jeopardy as Fu-Manchu will not wish him to finish the book for publication.

Of course, Rohmer is repeating himself for Van Roon reads like a variation on Sir Lionel Barton and Cragmire Tower recalls Reverend Eltham’s beloved Redmoat. The familiarity of the trappings does little to spoil the proceedings for this is Rohmer at his peak and sees him introducing an occult element to the series. Rohmer had a lifelong fascination with the occult and secret societies. “Cragmire Tower” remains unique in its successful blend of Yellow Peril thriller with supernatural mystery.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part Six – “The Silver Buddha”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part Six – “The Silver Buddha”

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silver-buddha-full“The Silver Buddha” was the sixth installment of Sax Rohmer’s Fu-Manchu and Company. The story was first published in Collier’s on May 15, 1915 and was later expanded to comprise Chapters 18-20 of the second Fu-Manchu novel, The Devil Doctor first published in the UK in 1916 by Cassell and in the US by McBride & Nast under the variant title, The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu.returnofdrfumanchu

The story sets off at a frantic pace with a desperate Dr. Petrie returning to J. Salaman’s antique shop on Museum Street where he believes he glimpsed Karamaneh in the previous installment. Petrie has foolishly decided to investigate the shop without informing Nayland Smith of his plans.

Posing as an antique collector, he is compelled to handle a silver Buddha that the shopkeeper tells him has already been sold. The statuette in question releases a concealed door and Petrie unexpectedly finds himself face to face with Dr. Fu-Manchu.

 

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part Five – “The Coughing Horror”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part Five – “The Coughing Horror”

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devil20doctor20black20dagger201994“The Coughing Horror” was the fifth installment of Sax Rohmer’s Fu-Manchu and Company. The story was first published in Collier’s on April 3, 1915 and was later expanded to comprise Chapters 14-17 of the second Fu-Manchu novel, The Devil Doctor first published in the UK in 1916 by Cassell and in the US by McBride & Nast under the variant title, The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

consuldevilThe story sees Rohmer return to fine form with Dr. Petrie awakening to Nayland Smith’s strangled cries for help from the room above his. He bursts through Smith’s door in time to hear a strange coughing sound from the window and the crack of a whip before he spies what appears to be a grey-skinned snake retracted from Smith’s neck and pulled bodily out the window as if it were riding a beam of light. Petrie provides much-needed medical attention for his friend has barely escaped this seemingly supernatural assassination attempt.

Interestingly, Smith insists there were small hairy fingers around his throat, but his bed is four feet from the window and no human could have reached him nor is there any explanation for the ghostly sight Petrie glimpsed. Smith was awakened by the sound of the mysterious creature coughing and tried fighting it off. He scratched off a layer of grey hairy skin which he shows to Petrie. They are still puzzled on how to rationally explain these bizarre sights, sounds, and sensations.

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The Spider Revival Part 2: City of Doom

The Spider Revival Part 2: City of Doom

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Spider-CityOfDoomLast week, I reviewed the first volume in Baen’s trade paperback reprints of the adventures of Norvell Page’s grisly pulp hero, The Spider. Now, I plunge into the violent maelstrom of … The Spider: City of Doom!

The three novels reprinted in this volume are The City Destroyer, The Faceless One, and The Council of Evil. The City Destroyer, which Page submitted under the title Crumbling Doom, is the earliest of Baen’s reprinted Spider stories, published originally in the January 1935 issue of The Spider. It also appeared in Pocket Books’ reformatted (with pointless modernizing) series in the ‘70s. It ranks as one of the Norvell Page’s best-written works, but it has an ugly timeliness that dulls the edge of the absurdist fantasy and may unsettle some readers. In the opening chapter the villain, decked out with the bland handle “The Master,” steals the secret for a metal-corroding dust. Richard Wentworth thinks the Master plans to use the chemical invention to break into bank vaults, but he should know that his adversaries don’t think that small. Instead of wasting time with piddling safes, the Master uses the chemical to knock down entire New York skyscrapers, killing thousands of people. His first target is New York’s newest, tallest building, and the writing dwells for a few pages on a gruesome depiction of the skyscraper’s collapse and the gory aftermath, complete with fleeing crowds, a dust cloud pluming over the Manhattan skyline, and trapped people trying to escape certain death in a crumbling tower.

Uhm … not a pleasant memory. At times, our world and that of the pulps share tragic similarities. Amidst the Great Depression and staring toward an oncoming second world war, pulp authors occasionally tapped into an insecurity not far removed from our own. The City Destroyer delivers more fear and tension than any thriller you’ll find on the recent bestseller lists, but new readers should be prepared for moments of queasy familiarity. It isn’t much of a nostalgia trip, and even the Spider’s heroics can’t halt an obscene death toll. I would conservatively estimate that seven thousand people perish during this story.

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The Spider Revival, Part 1: Robot Titans of Gotham

The Spider Revival, Part 1: Robot Titans of Gotham

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spider-robot-titans-of-gothamIf you have never met the most notorious of all pulp magazine heroes — The Spider, Master of Men! — then Baen Books has a deal for you. After a long absence from mass market paperbacks, the Spider returns in two Baen collections The Spider: Robot Titans of Gotham and The Spider: City of Doom. The two volumes pack together five of Norvell Page’s best Spider novels, plus a bonus yarn from his madcap typewriter.

(Update: Now there’s a third volume, The Spider vs. The Empire State.)

If you’ve previously met the Spider, you might have read some of these adventures from reprints in the Carroll & Graf series. Buy these new books anyway; I want Baen to feed us more.

As for you newcomers, I feel obliged to give you fair warning about the Spider. Otherwise you might wonder after reading one of these stories, “Was Norvell Page completely insane?” No, he was a professional pulp writer. Which may come down to the same thing, when you consider the deadlines. But even for the crazy world of the cheap paper story magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, the zenith years of this lost world of fiction, Page’s tales of the Spider are so overloaded with outrageous violence and fear, and so under-stocked with logic and elementary structuring, that it seems the author wrote them after shooting more heroin than Popeye Doyle confiscated in The French Connection.

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