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    The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu
    The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu
    The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

    Written by Sax Rohmer

    Narrated by John Bolen

    3/5

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    About this audiobook

    "Imagine a person tall, lean and feline, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long magnetic eyes of the true cat green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect. Imagine that awful being and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu."

    Dr. Fu-Manchu, the terrorizing and macabre master of a secretive Oriental organization, is dedicated to conquering the world. Fu-Manchu's greatest nemesis, British investigator Nayland Smith, is one of the few people who can meet Fu-Manchu's gaze without falling under his hypnotic power. It is up to Smith and his faithful companion, Dr. Petrie, to foil Dr. Fu-Manchu's diabolical plot.

    In The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, the lethal "Zayat Kiss," a red mark resembling the imprint of painted lips, is found among cocaine needle tracks on the dead body of Sir Crichton Davey. The power of Fu-Manchu is far-reaching as he employs a giant poisonous centipede, deadly toadstools, and lethal green mists to murder and kidnap the great minds of the West. Is the beautiful Karamaneh the key to uncovering the evil doctor's lair, or is she a pawn leading Smith and Petrie to their deaths?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateApr 6, 2009
    ISBN9781400179398
    Author

    Sax Rohmer

    Sax Rohmer (1883–1959) was a pioneering and prolific author of crime fiction, best known for his series of novels featuring the archetypal evil genius Dr. Fu-Manchu.

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    Reviews for The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

    3/5

    17 ratings17 reviews

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    • 3/5
      An enjoyable romp, although less a coherent storyline than a series of adventurous episodes. You need to leave your political correctness and non-racist sensibilities behind to read it comfortably, but if you can do that and accept that the political views and racist language were signs of the time it was written in rather than any unusually bigoted viewpoint of the author then you can enjoy the adventure. Speaking personally, and as someone who had read quite a bit of late 1800s - early 1900s fiction, I find these insights into the general mindset of the period fascinating and fiction, where such attitudes are simply an accepted part of the prose, brings this much more to life than any academic work ever could. Written today it would be offensive, but taken in the context of its time it is simply the way it was, and all the more interesting for it. It becomes a social history lesson without any intention of being so. While this first Dr Fu Manchu novel does not, in my opinion, reach the heights gained by such authors as H Rider Haggard, H G Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle or early Edgar Rice Burroughs (all of whom wrote in that period at the end of the 19th Century and/or the beginning of the 20th) it is nevertheless a fun adventurous romp rushing from one dangerous situation to the next. Forget your 21st Century sensibilities and enjoy.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Episodic and moderately entertaining yarn (or yarns) pitting Edwardian British Government agent Nayland Smith and his cohort, friend and narrator, Dr. Petrie, against the master criminal "yellow peril personified" Dr. Fu Manchu. Fu Manchu himself is the most interesting character, and his varied and ingenious ways of facilitating murder in inaccessible locales and locked rooms the most entertaining tropes. It was also amusing to read a thriller actually written in this era (circa 1913) depicting a world now so often treated in steampunk fare.

      As to the "politically incorrect" aspect, I will only observe that these stories were written on the heels of the Boxer Rebellion and opium wars. What can we make of the paranoia about the Yellow Race seeking to dominate the White Race if not the imperialists suppressed guilt projected outward onto to imagined mastermind of evil?
    • 4/5
      One of the proto-types of modern thrillers with a character that set the model for countless stock super-villains. It's a tightly-wound rush of a narrative written with all the subtlety of a jackhammer. Its shocking racism is off-putting, though comically hyperbolic, but the book still has value for its fantasy-like imagery and as the source-code for a broad range of genre literature.
    • 3/5
      To quote Barzun and Taylor:The Doctor's adventures may entertain once, partly because of well-contrived suspense, partly because of one's enjoyment of one's own folly in believing what one is told, for example the presence on Wimbledon Common of a menagerie of lethal creatures kept by htis sinister Chinese.And that's not all! Fungal spores that germinate instantly and are immediately lethal; a drug that drives a man mad with one injection; a drug that mimics death. Fortunately, for every drug there is an antidote. The Doctor is "the greatest fungologist the world has known." Madly racist, and entertainingly nutty.
    • 1/5
      Absolutely unreadable. But I know I enjoyed these when I was in high school.
    • 2/5
      Wikipedia calls this a novel, but it's more like a collection of episodes with a similar theme. It doesn't have the depth and character development of a novel.I remember the basic idea from the Fu Manchu films on TV in the 1970s. The story is very similar, and it gets repetitive after a while.Naylan Smith doesn't seem the sharpest tool in the box. Lots of nervous energy (always pulling his earlobe, pacing the floor or smacking his fist into his hand), but not much analysis of the situation. He tends to rush in without thinking, and is invariably outwitted by the "evil genious".An easy read, but no great depth, and the repetitiveness gets stale after a while.
    • 3/5
      A thinly veiled Sherlock Holmes knock-off combined with a large dose of Yellow Peril. The spectre of individually published stories linked together into a single volume also strikes again, rendering the entire thing heavily episodic in nature.
    • 2/5
      I thought I would give a Fu Manchu audiobook a go after finding the Christopher Lee films reasonably entertaining. Was it originally written in weekly episodes for a pulp magazine? That's what it appears to be - there is no real objective or conclusion to the novel, it is just a collection of chase, capture, escape ... Harrison, the reader, has a pleasant voice, but there was nothing about the tale to grab the attention. Give me Bulldog Drummond, any day!
    • 4/5
      I wasn't sure what to expect when I downloaded this free Kindle book to read. Set in early 1900's England, this story introduces Nayland Smith (an adventurer recently returned from the Orient), Dr. Petrie (who plays Watson to Smith's Holmes, and is a bit of a namby-pamby IMO), the beautiful dusky Arabic princess Kâramanèh (held as a slave by Fu Manchu... without any visible negative effects of course) and of course, Dr. Fu Manchu, the MOST evil, MOST intelligent, the MOST everything, to ever come out of the Orient. Repeated running from residence to residence, location to location, just misses and encounters with Fu Manchu where he somehow diabolically escapes... it's all great fun... if you like that sort of thing. 3 1/2 stars and hopeful for future installments...
    • 5/5
      I remember finding this in a box of musty old paperbacks when I was a kid, and reading it and being completely perplexed and intrigued. It's so wrong on so many levels. Yet, you've got Dr. Petrie prescribing whiskey and soda like it was going out of style. I've got to give some love to a group of characters whose idea of "hurry, we must catch Dr. Fu-Manchu" means that they have to drink their whiskey and soda quickly.
    • 3/5
      Meh. Bad in the ways I was expecting (overwrought racism, prose, etc.), but I just couldn't find myself caring about the plot (which was awfully episodic). Plot was acceptably outlined. Got some reasonably ridiculous quotes from it. I'd like to see a version that's sympathetic to the title character.
    • 3/5
      Well, okay, this is...it's entertaining, okay? I had fun. It's a pretty shameless Sherlock Holmes ripoff, with a doctor sidekick narrating an adventure in which the protagonist is his brilliant detectiveish friend. Moriarty is Asianified, but comes with the same breathless, constant hyperbolic descriptions: "The most brilliant criminal mind to have existed in generations!"

      The problem with hyperbole is that you kinda have to back it up. Conan Doyle is great at this. There's this fine line you want to walk: you want to leave the reader unable, usually, to solve the mystery, but when you do the big reveal at the end you want the reader not to feel cheated. I have to think, "I didn't get that - but I could have. I almost did. It makes sense." Conan Doyle pioneered that, as far as I know. (Don't bring up Dupin! Holmes owes that guy, but not for this. Poe sucked at this. "Murders at the Rue Morgue" spoiler: "The fucking orangutan did it" is not a good reveal.)

      On the other hand, there's a less-discussed, dirtier trick that can be effective: the obvious, shitty reveal that you totally guessed 50 pages ago. You think you don't like that, but actually you sortof do, for the same reason you enjoy easy crossword puzzles or yelling out Jeopardy answers: because it makes you feel smart. You may not come away with the utmost respect for the author...but you may buy his next book anyway, because it's nice to feel smart. I'm convinced that some authors do this on purpose. It's a bit of a craven, lazy strategy, but whatever works I guess.

      So...Fu Manchu sometimes pulls off some neat tricks. The explanation for the corpses with mutilated hands was pretty fun, and there's a terrific scene near the end involving mushrooms. And for all I know the old trapdoor trick was invented by Fu Manchu. (Good question, actually.) But still...most of the time, you can guess what's happened way before Nayland Smith does, which makes it hard to respect him as a genius, which therefore makes it hard to respect the insidious Chinaman who's constantly outsmarting him.

      And speaking of Chinamen, have you heard that this book is SUPER CRAZY RACIST? Well, you heard right! It is hilariously, horribly racist, in that adorable old-timey racist way: "Unless you have been in their clutches, you can never imagine the depths of cruelty to which a Chinaman is capable of stooping." You just want to pinch racism's cheek when it comes like that.

      This is pulp fiction at its pulpiest. Narrow escapes, beautiful exotic women, diabolical traps, madmen, gaping plot holes...Sure, man. I dug it.
    • 4/5
      Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green.The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu has all the weaknesses of the typical pulp stories of its era. It perpetuates racial and gender stereotypes, it relies too much on melodrama, and it overuses hyperbole. And yet, with all that, it still manages to entertain.The two protagonists, Petrie and Nayland Smith, are out to save the world from the evil genius Dr. Fu-Manchu. Try as they might to stop him, Fu-Manchu always stays one step ahead, moving from one shady hideout to the next, unleashing horrible dangers upon helpless victims. Fortunately, the two heroes have the help of the alluring Karamaneh, woman of mystery.Fans of the old pulp magazines like Doc Savage, The Shadow or Weird Tales will find much to enjoy in The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu. Readers with more modern tastes may find it offensive and hard to stomach.As for me, despite its flaws, I loved its energy, its exotic flavor, and the way Rohmer brings the evil Fu-Manchu to life.
    • 3/5
      A good story, though a trifle hard to read at times, do to the overt racism against the "yellow menace". Setting that aside, Dr. Fun Manchu is one heck of a villain - cunning, smart, and slippery as heck! Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie, along with Inspector Weymouth try hard to best him, but to no avail. I liked all the characters, along with the potential love interest Karamaneh, but the Dr. stands tall among them! He is their intellectual superior, and an expert in poisons, drugs, fungi, and bacilli, with the ability to come and go as he pleases! The story, and the style, remind me of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and the adversarial nature of the characters is reminiscent of another doctor, Sherlock Holmes. Still, the racist nature of the narrative does give me pause as to how I feel overall about the book. I leave it to you to decide for yourself!
    • 4/5
      A surprisingly good, albeit politically incorrect, read. Quite fun and a quick read. Petrie and Smith made worthy opponents to the evil Fu Manchu. Written in 1913, many aspects of this book seemed ahead of its time. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
    • 3/5
      I read this "yellow menace" novel when I was a kid and was enthralled by Rohmer's depiction of evil personified.
    • 1/5
      Arguably the WORST narrator I have EVER heard. Makes Libra Vox sound like talent. DREADFUL accents reeking of pretension, and a seeming inability to pronounce the letter "t" in the middle of any word. I kept listening for a while to see if this was actually meant as a joke or parody. Alas, no. An excellent piece of Sax Rohmer desecrated by a preposterous, pretentious ponce. AVOID his narrations like the autopsy of a loved one.