On This Page
Description
Immediately before World War II, Fu-Manchu decides to kill or control the world's war-mongering dictators, to pave the way for his own plans. The rapid-fire action movesnbsp; from London to Venice to Paris, and involves various arcane and scientific forms of torture and death. BONUS FEATURE: "The Mark of the Monkey", the second of three "lost adventures of Nayland Smith." It appeared in Collier's in 1931, then in the short story collection Tales of East and West.Tags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
The doctor has a plan to avoid WWII by assasinating people who might bring it on.
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Lists
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
87 works; 4 members
Author Information
189+ Works 6,114 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
Some Editions
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Doubleday Crime Club (1939.43)
Work Relationships
Is contained in
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Drums of Fu Manchu
- Original publication date
- 1939
- People/Characters
- Bart Kerrigan; Fu Manchu; Sir Denis Nayland Smith; Fah Lo Suee
- Important places
- Essex, England, UK; London, England, UK; Paris, France; Suffolk, England, UK; Venice, Veneto, Italy
- Related movies
- Drums of Fu Manchu (1943 | IMDb); Drums of Fu Manchu (1940 | IMDb)
- First words
- "Damn it! There is someone there!" I sprang up irritably, jerked the curtains aside and stared down in Bayswater Road.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)That unique voice faded away. Ardatha was trembling in my arms.
- Disambiguation notice
- Originally serialized in Collier's Magazine, April 1-June 3, 1939.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 164
- Popularity
- 197,814
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.58)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 11
- ASINs
- 12
