President Fu Manchu

Rating:
Summary: FU HOPS OVER THE POND
Review: In this, the 8th book of 14 in the Fu Manchu series, the good doctor hops "over the pond" and sets his nefarious sights on no less a prize than the conquest of the United States! This book marks yet another departure in the Fu Manchu series: It is the longest of the books, the most detailed, possibly the best written, takes place in the U.S. for the first time, and is the most political book in the series thus far. In this one, the Fu-man, through "the League of Good Americans," backs a presidential candidate who will, in time, become his puppet dictator. Our old friend Sir Nayland Smith is back, trying to stop this conquest; he is aided by Federal agent Mark Hepburn. For the first time in the series, Dr. Petrie does not make even a token appearance. This book features the typical fast pacing and grotesque action that have become familiar at this point in the series. We encounter numerous killings with poisonous spiders, a raid on a NYC Chinatown catacomb lair... a "Manchurian Candidate"-style assassination of a presidential hopeful (almost 30 years before that classic movie), a boat chase down the Niagara rapids, and much more. As I said, there is a great wealth of detail and incident in this installment. Fu, at one point, even takes time out of his busy agenda to operate on adying, diphtheritic boy; just Sax Rohmer's way of showing us that there is some good in the old doctor, after all.
I did have some minor problems with this Fu installment, however, good as it is. There really is no reason for there to be two characters named Wu Chang; this just leads to confusion for the reader! Also, at one point in the book, Fu Manchu tries to brainwash Hepburn from a hotel window one floor below where Hepburn's room is. A few pages later, it is said that Fu was TWO floors below! Also, the description of Wu King's underground Chinatown lair was, for me anyway, a bit hard to follow. But all in all, this is a mighty fun and involving book. And I just love the line that Fu Manchu delivers to Nayland Smith, right before attempting to blow him up with that bomb on top of the skyscraper (remember that this line comes after eight books' worth of chases and incredible adventure): "Our association, if at times tedious, has never been dishonorable."