I have signed up for a second year of The Alphabet in Crime Fiction, a community meme sponsored by Mysteries in Paradise.
Each week she'll be expecting participants to produce a post featuring a
mystery/crime novel or novelist related to that week's letter.
Kerrie has kept us moving right along on our criminal journey and we've already made it to the letter "G." Last week, I took a little journey of my own for a Route 66 tour and so I missed the letter "F." I'm going to make up for that in this week's post.
G is for Golden. As in The Golden Scorpion by Sax Rohmer. This story, like most of Rohmer's pulp fiction novels, features a popular theme for the time period (and one that politically correct folk will find most reprehensible today)--that of the Yellow Peril. As my review mentions, Rohmer traded heavily on Western fears of the "inscrutable" Chinese to create various super-villains--of which the so-called "Golden Scorpion" was one. He produced over 25 novels and short story collections that used this theme and many of his other works ran true to form with other super-villains who range from sheiks to Islamic fanatics--mysterious, non-Britishers all.
In addition to the Scorpion, I have also read The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu (aka The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu) [I told you
I'd catch us up on "F"]. And, although Scorpion was published
in 1919--six years after this first Dr. Fu-Manch adventure, it reads like a trial-run for the Fu-Manchu
stories. Lots of intrigue, cliffhanging adventures, mysterious & beautiful woman getting tangled up with our narrator, brilliant men of science (and other fields) dying right and left....and, behind it all, the evil of the Orient.
As long as the reader is prepared for the blatant racism of another era and willing to take it for what it is, these stories are great fun in small doses. I wouldn't want to read several in a row (and I took a substantial break between these two), but they could be an interesting guilty indulgence now and again.
5 comments:
Bev - Ah, the author of the Fu Manchu series! This is a great choice for G although I must say, I do get put off by the "-isms." But definitely lots of intrigue and derring-do :-).
I haven't read the Fu Manchu stories but I like the sound of the adventure.
I haven't read these. The quotes you included in the review of The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu make them sound very readable (ignoring the racism).
Good ones, Bev!
Do you know Bev, I misread the title and though this was going to be a review of Stout's THE GOLDEN SPIDERS! A friend of mine has been studiously reading all the Rohmer novels featuring Fu Manchu so I'll see if he'll lend me a few - I have enjoyed some fo the movie version starring Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee but maybe it's time to go to the source
Thanks!
Sergio
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