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Fu-Manchu journeys to the United States for the first time, and is the power behind a "League of Good Americans" candidate for the presidency. From Niagara Falls to the catacombs of NY's Chinatown, Nayland Smith and federal agent Mark Hepburn seek to stop the Devil Doctor and his plan to assassinate a presidential candidate - 30 years before The Manchurian Candidate! BONUS FEATURE: This volume includes the first of three "lost adventures of Nayland Smith". "The Blue Monkey," follows show more Smith and Petrie as they become embroiled in a murder investigation in Dartmoor. It appeared in Rohmer's 1920 book of short fiction, The Haunting of Low Fennel, and has only previously been included with the Fu-Manchu stories in France and Belgium. show lessTags
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Lammers A unique literary and historical view of the fears and uncertainties surrounding the 1936 Presidential election.
Member Reviews
What was gripping and timely in 1936 comes across in many respects as cringe-worthy or corny, read today. That said, Rohmer is definitely able to conjure up the fantastic, in this tale of an American presidential election being influenced by the power of Dr. Fu Manchu. The story does have a gigantic plot hole that a better reading of the Constitution would have avoided. Stand-ins for Huey Long are probably the most recognizable at this distance. Worth reading, with a careful eye that this was written in less sensitive times.
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Author Information
189+ Works 6,135 Members
Sax Rohmer was born in Birmingham, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he adopted the name Sarsfield, the name of a famous Irish general admired by Rohmer's mother. He married Rose Elizabeth Knox in 1909 and, at his wife's insistence, began using the name Sax Rohmer for his fiction, eventually employing the pseudonym as his actual name. Rohmer was show more basically a self-taught scholar. He started writing as a journalist; his beat was the Limehouse underworld in London. Rohmer had a difficult time breaking into the professional fiction markets, but once he did, he became a household name for exotic adventure both in England and in America. Although his writing brought Rohmer success and money, he was never much of a businessman, and most of his wealth was squandered because of his extravagance and through financial mismanagement. Rohmer eventually moved to New York City. One of Rohmer's great intellectual interests was the occult and supernatural, and these elements frequently appeared as motifs in his fiction. His most famous creation was the evil oriental mastermind, Dr. Fu Manchu, first presented in the novel The Mystery of Fu Manchu in 1913 (later retitled The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu for its American publication, also in 1913). Most espionage or adventure fiction exploits the social paranoias of its time, and Rohmer himself effectively tapped the Westerner's fear of the stereotyped "yellow peril" threat---the negatively perceived belief that Orientals will conquer the world. The Fu Manchu adventures were patterned, in part, after Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. Rohmer's protagonists in these adventures, Sir Denis Nayland Smith and his companion Dr. Petrie, look very much like Doyle's Holmes and Watson, but, whereas Doyle centered his narratives on the heroes and specifically on the elaborate process of detection, Rohmer focused his attention on the villain and on slam-bang action. Fu Manchu was a master of both Western science and Eastern mysticism, and his efforts at world domination caused no end of problems for Smith and Petrie. In Fu Manchu, Rohmer had created the most famous villain in popular fiction (although Rohmer maintained that Fu Manchu was based on an actual Limehouse criminal). Despite Rohmer's use of outrageous racial stereotyping, many of his novels hold up well today and provide superior examples of how to create narrative pacing and suspense. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Doubleday Crime Club (1936.38)
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- President Fu Manchu
- Original title
- President Fu Manchu
- Alternate titles
- The Invisible President (serialisation) (serialisation)
- Original publication date
- 1936-12
- People/Characters
- Fu Manchu; Sir Denis Nayland Smith
- Important places
- New York, New York, USA
- Important events
- United States presidential election (1936)
- First words
- Three cars drew up, the leading car abreast of a great bronze door bearing a design representing the beautiful agonized face of the Savior, a crown of thorns crushed down upon His brow.
- Quotations
- "Sax Rohmer has done in this book, for the field of adventure fiction, what Sinclair Lewis did for serious fiction in his novel IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE ..."
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The man who had dared to remodel nature's forces had been claimed at last by the gods he had outraged.
- Disambiguation notice
- Originally serialized in Collier's Magazine, February 29-May 16, 1936.
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Statistics
- Members
- 139
- Popularity
- 233,816
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.43)
- Languages
- English, Portuguese
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 8
- ASINs
- 17
