"The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu" by Sax Rohmer (1913)

For a simple change of pace, I decided to try something else completely and turned my attention to a 100 year old pulp novel, originally published in magazines chapter by chapter as serialisation in magazines like "Colliers" and this explains why the novel feels like perpetual high-adrenaline adventure chase, since each chapter ends with a cliffhanger. It was a huge sensation of its time and inspired sequels and movie versions, but I'm afraid it did not age very well. 

Sax Rohmer (real name Arthur Henry Ward) perhaps wanted to write something similar to Sherlock Holmes novels, a story with two heroes who are both fighting the evil. In this case we have Sir Denis Nayland Smith (a sort of well-wheeled government agent who inspires instant respect from everyone he meets) and his accidental helper, Dr Petrie who actually tells the story from his perspective. Nayland has just returned from Burma - all tanned and worried about a certain dangerous individual who is danger for the whole white race (!) and here is where things go funny. I cannot possibly imagine how was it a 100 years ago, but in a present time this sounds fairly ludicrous - back than, it served the purpose of creating "us against them" perspective, where good guys fight an obvious enemy who must be different, as to easily distinguish it from "our boys". It would actually work better if Rohmer created an antagonist who can easily hide in a crowd, instead of making every single Asian character instantly suspicious - but who am I to say, Rohmer became wealthy and successful with these novels and it just doesn't make sense to judge a 100 year old novel by our current standards.

It starts fairly well and the game of cat & mouse reminded me strangely on French detective novel "Fantomas" (written more or less at the same time as this one) but at certain point it became repetitive - chapter after chapter, our guys follow Asian characters into a dangerous, dimly lit places and opium dens, just to narrowly escape sure death by poison, etc, etc. Each time mad genius of Dr. Fu Manchu almost gets them, but than something (or somebody) helps them so we continue to more chapters of exactly same premises. There is an obligatory young beauty who for no apparent reason falls in love with Dr Petrie and she usually helps when everything seems lost. Towards the end I even got a little bored, it might be that certain old novels (like this one, or "The Phantom of the Opera" from the same time) are just too old.