Before his passing, Cay Van Ash published this sequel to his Fu Manchu pastiche TEN YEARS BEYOND BAKER STREET. Van Ash began work on a second sequel but whatever rough draft he may have completed was lost after his death.
In my review of BAKER, I mentioned how Van Ash had interpolated that narrative into a time-frame of a few months between chapters in the Rohmer book HAND OF FU MANCHU. Van Ash's prologue-- in which he claims to be recapitulating the notes of Doctor Petrie for the adventure that follows-- insinuates that the remaining chapters of HAND, which conclude with Fu's apparent death at sea, also took place in 1914, rather than at the book's publication date of 1917. But 1917, when World War One has been grinding on for three years, is the timeline for FIRES OF FU MANCHU. In fact, Nayland Smith, who's usually a police commissioner with broad powers to pursue Fu Manchu, is inducted into the British army, and then sent to Cairo when there's news of new Devil-Doctor activity. By a fortunate coincidence, Smith's sidekick Doctor Petrie moved his practice to Cairo with his wife Karameneh, whom he liberated from Fu Manchu in HAND. However, before the novel even starts, Smith wires Petrie to send his wife away from their home, on the chance that the Doctor may reach out to harm his former slave. (Arguably, the real reason Karameneh is gone from the whole book is so that Petrie will get the chance to interact with three different beauties while the wife's away.)
The story commences by introducing Fu's new weapon, the super-scientific "fires" of the title, though arguably that device fades in importance of other concerns. Fu comes to Cairo looking for a renegade German scientist who has his own super-weapon-- and it doesn't take a lot of figuring to anticipate that this one is based in real science. However, Fu doesn't have a wealth of resources after all the defeats he suffered in 1914. He has some Arab allies and what appears to be some sort of animal-human hybrid, sort of a "rhino-man," which I guess anticipates the artificial humanoid seen in 1948's SHADOW OF FU MANCHU. In addition, Fu is also served by both of the femmes fatales from HAND, the cruel temptress Zarmi and the incomparable Fah Lo Suee.
The third "beauty" I referenced is one Greba Eltham. This minor character appeared in Rohmer's 1916 RETURN OF DR FU MANCHU, and Van Ash clearly cast her as Petrie's nurse-assistant in order to give Petrie more feminine problems, given that Greba's clearly in love with the physician. Greba ultimately finds true love elsewhere, but she gets into a cat-spat with none other than Fah Lo Suee. Rohmer never intimated that his version of Fah had any interest in Petrie, and arguably even her affection for Smith isn't established until late in the series. True, Fah doesn't love Petrie. She tries to seduce him early in the novel for the purpose of getting information, but after doing so, seems to consider that she's "staked out a claim" on him. Oddly, though, it's the hellcat Zarmi-- who like Greba only appeared in one Rohmer novel-- who *may* get further than first base with married man Petrie, according to a speculative footnote by Van Ash. Fah Lo Suee gets more scenes than the other two females, though I felt Van Ash's interpretation of her lacked some je ne sais qua.
As for the Devil-Doctor, he gets two speaking-scenes near the novel's beginning and at the end. While FIRES is just a good formula thriller with no deeper resonance, Van Ash is almost the only author who managed to duplicate the way Rohmer had the character speak, with a combination of dispassionate cruelty, sagacity, and an odd capacity for mercy. Only one film came close to the fascinating Fu-speech pattern, the serial DRUMS OF FU MANCHU, and none of the comic book iterations were any good on that score. Fu naturally appears to "die" again at novel's end. Rohmer never gave a diegetic reason as to why the Doctor went out of circulation between the years 1917 (not counting a flashback cameo appearance in 1918's GOLDEN SCORPION) and 1928 (which is the year in which Van Ash's prologue claims the Doctor returned). FIRES was not that novel, but perhaps there's some chance it may still be written by someone, someday.
No comments:
Post a Comment