Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Yellow Claw – Part Four

Sax Rohmer’s The Yellow Claw was originally serialized in five installments in Lippincott’s from February through June 1915. The serial was subsequently published in book form later that same year by Methuen Press in the UK and McBride & Nast in the US. The novel chooses to divide the story into four sections. This week, we examine the fourth and final part.

Rohmer really delivers with the final section of the novel with the development of the Eurasian femme fatale, Mahara who was previously referred to only under the mysterious moniker of Our Lady of the Poppies. Mahara becomes a flesh and blood character fiercely jealous to think that her lover, Gianopolis has been thinking of leaving her for another. The object of his affections is Helen Cumberley, Henry Leroux’s neighbor who despises Gianapolis as much as she pines for the unhappy thriller writer. Such a tangled web of unrequited love is uncommon for Rohmer, but it added to the novel’s appeal in its day and is surely one of the reasons that Stoll chose it to be the first of his works to bring to the silver screen.

The narrative then switches to Gaston Max in the observation chamber of the opium den. The famous French detective feigns smoking opium, but only exhales through the pipe. Faking a drug-induced stupor, Max waits while Ho-Pin enters the room to check on him and is then startled to discover that upon his exit, Mahara has entered. Rohmer relished creating memorable femme fatales and Mahara seems to have been his first notable accomplishment with such a character. The Eurasian temptress passionately kisses the supposedly unconscious Max while lying upon him and cooing to him how she is going to enter his dreams. The image of a man forced to feign unconsciousness while a seductive female grinds into him is certainly powerful and far from the norm for fiction in 1915.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Yellow Claw – Part Three

Sax Rohmer’s The Yellow Claw was originally serialized in five installments in Lippincott’s from February through June 1915. The serial was subsequently published in book form later that same year by Methuen Press in the UK and McBride & Nast in the US. The novel chooses to divide the story into four sections. This week, we examine the third part.

Rohmer shifts the action back to Inspector Dunbar and Gaston Max’s investigation into the murder at the Leroux residence. Despite the press fingering Soames, the Leroux butler, as chief suspect, the detectives are sure that finding Soames will lead them to the mysterious Mr. King, the real culprit. Gaston Max suggests that Mr. King is a Chinaman with the reasoning that since the deceased was an opium addict, the murder is likely tied to Limehouse.

The French detective adopts the false identities of both Abraham Levinsky and Monsieur Gaston of Paris to infiltrate the bohemian circle that frequents the opium den. Max had stumbled onto the trail of Mr. King in Paris where the opium dealer was operating in an apartment next to the historical residence of the late Joseph Balsamo, alias the infamous Count Cagliostro. From here, Rohmer is on familiar territory at last as Max’s description of his raid on the Paris opium den is decidedly more typical of Rohmer’s Fu Manchu thrillers.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Yellow Claw – Part Two

Sax Rohmer’s The Yellow Claw was originally serialized in five installments in Lippincott’s from February through June 1915. The serial was subsequently published in book form later that same year by Methuen Press in the UK and McBride & Nast in the US. The novel chooses to divide the story into four sections. This week, we examine the second part.

Rohmer shifts gears unexpectedly by focusing Part Two of the novel on Soames, the Leroux butler who skipped out when Inspector Dunbar arrived at his employer’s home to investigate a murder. We learn Luke Soames fled because of his chequered past (he was dismissed by his previous employer for theft) that led him to falling prey to the sinister Mr. Gianapolis who arranged for Soames’ employment in the Leroux household. Soames is aware that Mr. Gianapolis works for a mysterious Mr. King who has some secret connection to Mrs. Leroux, but for awhile Soames is content to question little and perform the few curious extra duties that Gianapolis requests of him.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Yellow Claw – Part One

Sax Rohmer’s The Yellow Claw was originally serialized in five installments in Lippincott’s from February through June 1915. The serial was subsequently published in book form later that same year by Methuen Press in the UK and McBride & Nast in the US. The novel chooses to divide the story into four sections which is how we shall examine the title over the next four weeks.

Rohmer’s first Yellow Peril thriller outside the Fu Manchu series is chiefly remembered today for having introduced the character of his dapper French detective, Gaston Max of the Surete. Max went on to feature in three other novels [The Golden Scorpion (1918), The Day the World Ended (1929), and Seven Sins (1943)] as well as the BBC radio series, Myself and Gaston Max adapted from a series of short stories about an entirely different Rohmer character known as The Crime Magnet.

Gaston Max was highly influenced by Edgar Allan Poe’s Auguste Dupin, the series detective who did much to direct the development of the mystery genre and was a primary source of inspiration for both Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. Max was not Rohmer’s first attempt at fashioning his own French detective after Dupin’s example. His very first novel, The Sins of Severac Bablon (1912) featured Gaston Max’s prototype, Victor Lemage. The interesting feature is that while elements of Yellow Peril thrillers will surface in the book, Rohmer was trying hard to write a more conventional and realistic detective story in a direct break from the thrillers that made his name.

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Lyndsay Faye’s The Gods of Gotham is a Modern Classic

Lyndsay Faye made quite a splash a couple years ago with her excellent Sherlock Holmes novel, Dust and Shadow. It was an impressive debut for a first-time novelist not only for taking on the world’s most famous sleuth but in choosing to have him investigate the most notorious criminal case of Victorian London. Holmes had, of course, already tackled Jack the Ripper in A Study in Terror which came off as an exceptionally good Holmes film and novelization (by Ellery Queen, no less) in the mid-sixties. What could this ambitious young woman bring to the Ripper case that Alan Moore or Nicholas Meyer had not already covered in From Hell and Time After Time, respectively? Quite a lot, it turned out. Ms. Faye delivered a cracking good mystery and an excellent piece of historical fiction in one turn. The question was how to follow her success.

Another Holmes story for an anthology that was published hot on the heels of her first book was taken as proof of her intent to join the ranks of the multitude of successors continuing the exploits of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s immortal consulting detective. In a sense, Ms. Faye has done just that with her newly-published and wholly original sophomore effort, The Gods of Gotham. Her new series hero, Timothy Wilde, is a character Conan Doyle would have been proud to call his own and is not without his parallels to the famous resident of London’s Baker Street.

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Lost Classics of Pulp: Guy Boothby’s Dr. Nikola and Pharos the Egyptian

One doesn’t have to dig very far to discover my devotion to the works of Sax Rohmer. Peter Haining was, I believe, the first commentator to propose that Australian writer Guy Boothby’s works were a likely influence on Rohmer in the excellent survey, The Art of Mystery and Detective Stories. I first stumbled upon Boothby’s name and that of his most famous creation, Dr. Nikola courtesy of Larry Knapp’s brilliant Page of Fu Manchu website. Finally, it was a very informative piece written by that eminent Sherlockian, Charles Prepolec that convinced me I had to read the Nikola series for myself.

Five Nikola books were published between 1895 and 1901. The best editions available today are in the two-volume The Complete Dr. Nikola published by Leonaur Press. Dr. Nikola is a criminal mastermind with an occult twist. Think Conan Doyle’s Professor Moriarty (introduced only one year before Nikola) eerily anticipating Aleister Crowley and you have a pretty good idea of Boothby’s ambitions.

Like much fantastic fiction of the Victorian era, the books are more about how others fall into Nikola’s web than they are about the sinister doctor himself. This was the same approach taken by Bram Stoker with Dracula and Rohmer with his Fu Manchu series. The Nikola books are also globe-trotting adventures that move rapidly from Australia to Europe to Egypt to London to Africa to Tibet. The sense of mystery that pervades these exotic settings in those imperialist days of empire-building is part of the books’ nostalgic appeal today.

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The Other Dracula the Undead

Continued health-related issues again delayed the planned entry on Guy Boothby’s Pharos the Egyptian. I hope readers will enjoy my revisiting (and rewriting of)the second entry in this blog from January 2010 as it predates the greater exposure my work has received since my former association with The Cimmerian or my current work for The Black Gate. I hope to be back up to full speed and health next week. Thank you for your patience.

I belong firmly to the camp of Bram Stoker fan that approached Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt’s Dracula the Un-Dead with great anticipation and left disappointed. Well, actually appalled might be a more apt description of the reading experience. Had I not had my jaws wired shut at the time I read the book, I would have described myself as speechless. Severn House, a small press that has been kicking around for at least forty years when they took over Tom Stacey’s imprint, decided to capitalize on the attendant hoopla of a Stoker descendant co-writing a sequel to reprint an earlier literary sequel with very nearly the same title.

Freda Warrington’s Dracula the Undead was originally published to mark the centennial of Stoker’s classic original in 1997. I was aware of the book prior to its reprinting, but avoided it like the plague at the time believing incorrectly it was comparable to Elaine Bergstrom aka Marie Kiraly romanticized and anemic sequels, Mina and Blood to Blood. There is an element of romance found in Warrington’s book that does not ring true for the Stoker purist, but Ms. Warrington is a gifted British fantasy and horror author who accomplished something few writers can claim – she authored a sequel to a literary classic that doesn’t pale in comparison.

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