The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu

About the book

Dr. Petrie's quiet London life changes when Nayland Smith returns from Burma with warnings about Fu Manchu, a brilliant and dangerous adversary. Attacks employing unusual poisons, hidden agents, and elaborate traps repeatedly place the pair close to death as they try to understand and frustrate their opponent's plans. Petrie's narration combines medical observation with astonishment, giving each apparent explanation the possibility of another reversal. The novel's suspense is inseparable from its racist 'Yellow Peril' framework, which presents Asian knowledge and people through fantasies of menace to white imperial power. Reading that construction critically is central to understanding the work. Its episodic encounters reveal both Rohmer's talent for cliffhanging peril and the prejudices organizing his imagined conflict.

• Conspiracy and pursuit
• Imperial fear
• Scientific menace

Why read it

Read it to examine an influential form of pulp suspense together with the racial mythology on which it depends.

English text