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Title:
The Hand of Fu-Manchu
Series: Dr Fu-Manchu
#3
Author: Sax Rohmer
Rating: 3 of 5
Stars
Genre: Pulp Mystery
Pages:
192
Words: 59K
Publish: 1917
This
BARELY squeaked over the 3star line, by a mere whisker in fact. Dr
Fu-Manchu survives getting shot in the head from the previous book
and kidnaps Petrie and some other famous doctor. He forces them to
operate on him and remove the bullet. Outside of that, Dr Fu-Manchu
barely features. This was originally titled “The Si-Fan Mysteries”
and was about the group that Fu-Manchu was part of, the Si-fan. A
group of Asians bent on world domination. * insert eye roll
Anyway, Nayland Smith and Petrie face off against various members of the group and survive even while acting like complete idiots most of the time. I have to say, if Rohmer had some sort of “white savior” complex, he couldn’t have done a worse job if he had tried. Buffoons and clowns are how I think of Smith and Petrie now. Rohmer forces them into idiocy to propel the plot and it just gets down right ugly sometimes.
The whole “Yellow Threat” tones down even more and we’re not slapped in the face with it every chapter like in the previous two books. That was welcome, as it was becoming rather stale since there was no evidence of it actually coming to pass or happening at all. Kind of like the boy who cried wolf, except this would be the author who cried yellow threat. Ha! But like I said, it was really toned down.
Karamenah, Petrie’s exotic love interest, has run her course and Rohmer can’t figure out how to use her any more, so she makes a few desultory showings here and is pretty much a non-entity. Petrie needs to marry her and then build a castle around her so Dr Fu-Manchu can’t keep kidnapping her like he’s been doing. I swear, she’s been kidnapped, brainwashed, etc like six times now. Get that woman a gun! Preferably a repeater so she can shoot Fu-Manchu multiple times in the head next time he tries to kidnap her. Nobody survives a double tap to the forehead!
Finally, I’d like to talk about the cover. For each of these books I am trying to find the cover that I like the best. Not necessarily the same publisher or artist, but something that stands out to me. This time around, we get this truly creepy spiderlike rendition of Dr Fu-Manchu. He’s not brilliant looking like in the first cover. He’s not residing over the scene like in the second cover. This time, he’s just plain horrifying. And that makes him a great villain in my books :-D
★★★☆☆
From the Publisher
Sir Gregory Hale returns to London from Mongolia with a mysterious Tulun-Nur chest that holds the ‘key to India’, a vital secret of the Fu Manchu’s notorious Si-Fan organization. Unfortunately Hale is murdered before he is able to disclose the secret to Nayland Smith. The Burmese police commissioner and Dr. Petrie launch a mission to affront the brilliant but deadly master criminal before he succeeds in his malignant and fantastic plot to take over the world.
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