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Includes annotations on:

- Biography Of Author
- Literary Critique
- Historical Context


Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, ... one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present ... Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu. A master criminal, Fu Ma... More

Includes annotations on:

- Biography Of Author
- Literary Critique
- Historical Context


Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, ... one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present ... Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu. A master criminal, Fu Manchu's murderous plots are marked by the extensive use of arcane methods; he disdains guns or explosives, preferring dacoits, Thuggee, and members of other secret societies as his agents armed with knives, or using "pythons and hamadryads... fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli... my black spiders" and other peculiar animals or natural chemical weapons. According to Cay Van Ash (a friend and biographer of Sax Rohmer, who wrote his own authorized pastiches Ten Years Beyond Baker Street and The Fires of Fu Manchu) "Fu Manchu" was a title of honor, which meant "the Warlike Manchu." It was thought that the character had been a member of the Imperial family who backed the losing side in the Boxer Rebellion. In the earliest books, Fu Manchu is an assassin sent on missions by the Si-Fan, but he quickly rises to become head of that dreaded secret society. At first, the Si-Fan's goal is to throw the Europeans out of Asia; later, the group attempts to intervene more generally in world politics, while funding itself by more ordinary crime. Dr. Fu Manchu has extended his already considerable lifespan by use of the elixir vitae, a formula he spent decades trying to perfect. When China falls to Communism, Jason Deadman and Fu Manchu fight to restore the China of old.


THE START OF CHAPTER 1:

"When did you last hear from Nayland Smith?" asked my visitor.

I paused, my hand on the siphon, reflecting for a moment.

"Two months ago," I said: "he's a poor correspondent and rather
soured, I fancy."

"What--a woman or something?"

"Some affair of that sort. He's such a reticent beggar, I really know
very little about it."

I placed a whisky and soda before the Rev. J. D. Eltham, also sliding
the tobacco jar nearer to his hand. The refined and sensitive face of
the clergyman offered no indication to the truculent character of the
man. His scanty fair hair, already grey over the temples, was silken
and soft-looking: in appearance he was indeed a typical English
churchman; but in China he had been known as "the fighting
missionary," and had fully deserved the title. In fact, this
peaceful-looking gentleman had directly brought about the Boxer
Risings!

"You know," he said in his clerical voice, but meanwhile stuffing
tobacco into an old pipe with fierce energy, "I have often wondered,
Petrie--I have never left off wondering--"

"What?"

"That accursed Chinaman! Since the cellar place beneath the site of
the burnt-out cottage in Dulwich Village--I have wondered more than
ever."

He lighted his pipe and walked to the hearth to throw the match in the
grate.

"You see," he continued, peering across at me in his oddly nervous
way--"one never knows, does one? If I thought that Dr. Fu-Manchu lived;
if I seriously suspected that that stupendous intellect, that wonderful
genius, Petrie, er"--he hesitated characteristically--"survived, I
should feel it my duty--"

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