Following
the quixotic brilliance of PRESIDENT FU MANCHU, DRUMS proves less
ambitious, but still adds up to a more pleasing potboiler than some
previous works in the series. Though the doctor has just missed out
on his chance to become a Head of State, he’s decided this time out
to intimidate actual politicians into doing his bidding. If they
don’t heed the warnings of the Si-Fan’s Council of Seven (missing
in the action for a while, though mentioned a few times in
PRESIDENT), then Fu engineers their assassinations. Though this seems
like a return to the pattern of the early three books, the
devil-doctor makes greater use of SF-weapons, such as a new
contagion, the Green Death, and a disintegrator ray the size of a
fountain pen.
Sax
Rohmer debuts yet another earnest young viewpoint character. This
time it’s Bart Kerrigan, a fighting reporter who drops everything
to join Nayland Smith’s cause. In line with the usual pattern,
Kerrigan’s peregrinations bring him into contact with a young woman
who seems a recent convert to the Si-Fan, Ardatha. Like Karameneh
and Fleurette, Ardatha has partial “Eastern” heritage, though
Rohmer never specifies her background, except that she was given a
religious education in an Egyptian Coptic Church. Both characters are
unremarkable, with the exception of an early exchange between them,
when Ardatha decries the ways of modern warfare:
And your Christian rules, your rulers of the West—yes? What do they do? If the Si-Fan kills a man, that man is an active enemy. But when your Western murderers kill they kill men, women and children—hundreds—thousands who never harmed them—
Kerrigan
tries to dismiss Ardatha’s animus as “sophistry,” but Rohmer
must’ve been aware that he was entering somewhat uncharted
territory. Most of Fu Manchu’s pawns do not seek to justify their
actions, and even though MASK OF FU MANCHU imagines a Near Eastern
uprising like that of the Mahdi Rebellion, the author does not
address any sociopolitical grievances. To an extent Ardatha is
repeating anti-modernity arguments Fu himself voiced in PRESIDENT,
but her protests are rendered nugatory when she allows her amour for
Kerrigan to sweep aside her commitment to the cause.
Though
Fu’s attempt to control world affairs sounds like a logical
development from the previous novel, the various
assassination-gambits are fairly dull, since Rohmer neglects to
develop any of the political figures. Two of Fu’s prospective
targets, Rudolf Adlon and Pietro Monaghani, have names minimally
similar to real-life tyrants Hitler and Mussolini, though Rohmer does
not make any one-on-one comparisons. The author even disassociates
Adlon from the Nazi cause, and portrays the character as courageous
as he faces down the devil-doctor in a brief scene. Nayland Smith and
Kerrigan manage to foil enough of Fu’s schemes that there’s some
suggestion that the Council may depose the doctor as the President of
the Si-Fan, but Rohmer only raises this intriguing possibility to
dismiss it too easily.
The
novel’s primary source of interest—aside from an amusing scene in
which Fu dismisses Western techniques of torture as “primitive and
clumsy”-- is the revival of Fah Lo Suee. When during this case
Smith first hears descriptions of a green-eyed beauty, he tells
Kerrigan that she’s both a “zombie” and a “vampire,” even
though he knows that she’s nothing of the kind. Later, when Smith
and Kerrigan are captives of Fu Manchu, the doctor explains during
the events of TRAIL he faked his daughter’s death and brainwashed
her, giving her the new identity of “Koreani.” The villain also
claims that, prior to Smith’s daring escape, he intended to follow
the same pattern with Smith, though Fu doesn’t mention whether or
not he would have resurrected his other British captives. Aside from
executing Fu’s less important enemies, the entire climax of TRAIL
now appears to have been a dumb-show, but one for no particular
person’s benefit, given that the only other witnesses to the
spectacle would have been the doctor’s utterly slavish
subordinates. In any case, after her brainwashing Koreani executes
the same functions she did in earlier stories—mostly that of
beguiling men-- but with no ambitions of her own. However, when Fu
Manchu captures both Kerrigan and Smith, Koreani vaguely recognizes
Smith. She’s not intrigued enough with him to intentionally aid his
escape, but thanks to her interest Smith manages to secure a device
that makes liberation possible. That said, Rohmer still does not
choose to let Smith make any comments on the fact that Fu Manchu’s
daughter pledged her love to him two novels back.
Fu’s
scheme to control the world powers just sort of peters out at the
novel’s end, which is probably a consequence of the author
returning to his episodic format. Even the title signals the book’s
fragmented status, for it’s only in the early chapters that some of
Fu’s victims are bedeviled by the sound of mysterious drums. These
sounds are the only thing the novel has in common with the 1940 serial, which is essentially a remake of 1932’s MASK OF FU MANCHU.
One presumes that the studio only used the title of the book because
DRUMS was published the year previous, so that in theory the title
might bring in the Rohmer-reading contingent into theaters. For that
matter, the serial is more faithful to the drum-motif than Rohmer
was, for most if not all episodes have Fu’s deviltry heralded by
the sinister music—which is just one of many touches that made the
DRUMS serial the best adaptation of Sax Rohmer’s premiere creation.
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