Steve Harrison Reconsidered

It has become fashionable to regard Robert E. Howard’s Steve Harrison as the author’s lone failure. Much is made of what Howard expressed in letters about disliking hardboiled detective stories as both an author and a reader. Emphasis is placed on the fact that very few of the Steve Harrison stories found a market in the author’s lifetime. Critics measure the Steve Harrison tales against Hammett and Chandler and dismiss Howard’s efforts with disdain. All of this ignores how the character first came to prominence in the late 1970s when Berkeley Books collected “Lord of the Dead” and “Names in the Black Book” in Skull-Face.

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The Body's Upstairs at Hangover House

Sax Rohmer’s last title to receive a hardcover edition in the US during his lifetime was Hangover House. It was Rohmer’s final showing on the bestseller lists and his only novel published by Random House. It was first serialized in Collier’s from February 19 to March 19, 1949 prior to its hardcover publication by Random House in the US and Herbert Jenkins in the UK.

Interestingly, Collier’s had published an earlier iteration as the short story, “Serpent Wind” in their November 7, 1942 issue. This story was part of a series later collected in book form in 1944 by Robert Hale as Egyptian Nights in the UK and by McBride & Nast under the title Bimbashi Baruk of Egypt in the US. “Serpent Wind” was retitled “The Scarab of Lapis Lazuli” for its hardcover publication. The story later appeared under its original title in the anthologies, Murder for the Millions in 1946 and Horror and Homicide in 1949.

Both story and novel had their origins in an unproduced stage play entitled The Body’s Upstairs which Sax and Elizabeth Rohmer wrote together based on a real life incident at their 1938 New Year’s Eve party at their home in Surrey. Hangover House refers to what today might be termed a “crash pad” for a group of upper class revelers whose overindulgence and indiscretions lead to both adultery and murder in this fast-paced mystery which is easily Rohmer’s best traditional detective story.


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On the Trail of the Octopus

Eric Stedman of The Serial Squadron has a well-deserved reputation for restoring vintage serials (in many cases salvaging otherwise lost serials) and preserving them for posterity. As Sax Rohmer’s 133rd birthday is rapidly approaching, I thought I would turn attention to a vintage 1919 serial that borrowed quite a few elements from Rohmer’s work, The Trail of the Octopus. The Serial Squadron released their restored version of this forgotten gem in 2012.

 

The original serial produced by Hallmark Pictures nearly a century earlier comprises 15 chapters. The serial is centered around an Asian criminal mastermind, Wang Foo (known as “The Octopus”) who commands an international gang of Egyptians, Chinese, Africans, Turks, Jews, even a cult of devil worshippers in pursuit of an ancient Egyptian artifact, the Sacred Talisman of Set. While Fu Manchu was the head of an international secret society that contained Europeans as well as Asians and Arabs, it’s impossible not to see that The Octopus commands all of the stereotypical foreign and/or exotic elements feared by white Europeans just after the First World War.

 

 

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Sax Rohmer Sees Red

The Moon is Red was first published in the UK in hardcover by Herbert Jenkins in February 1954. A paperback edition from Digit Books followed in 1964. The first US edition was published by Bookfinger as a limited edition hardcover in January 1977. It was the last non-series Rohmer novel. While far from his best work in my view (the author was already 70 years old at the time of its writing), it is certainly of interest as a curio to devotees.

 

The late Rohmer scholar, Dr. Robert E. Briney (editor and publisher of The Rohmer Review) considered it the best of Rohmer’s last dozen books. In my view it is far inferior to Virgin in Flames (1952) and even less successful an effort than Bianca in Black (1958) which was written by (or at least credited to) the author’s wife. The authorship of those late period works has always been a matter of contention by fans. While Rohmer certainly never employed professional ghost writers, both his wife and his protégé and secretary, Cay Van Ash were indispensable to him in later years. Their names appear with his on a number of radio and television scripts he authored during this period. When questioned on the matter in the 1970s, Van Ash maintained he only served as a typist and did minor editing of manuscripts while the author’s widow stated her input was limited to discussing plot points and occasionally suggesting story ideas (she claimed the first Sumuru story was her original concept). Regardless, Rohmer’s best fiction of the 1950s was largely confined to the short story market as his full-length novels more evidently display the frailties of age and the passage of time to their overall detriment.

 

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The Other Sax Rohmer

I recently penned an article examining the possibility that four privately-printed titles by The Theosophical Society of London might have been the work of a young Sax Rohmer since he and the author of the four theosophical works were both born in the UK as Arthur Henry Ward in 1883. Rohmer shared a lifelong interest in theosophy and occasionally wrote non-fiction pieces on the topic and other occult interests. The current article is concerned with a second mystery writer with the name Sax Rohmer or, more correctly stated, Elizabeth Sax Rohmer.

 

Credited on the back of her lone novel as the daughter of Sax Rohmer, Elizabeth was in fact his wife. Born Rose Elizabeth Knox into a family of Music Hall entertainers, her brother Teddy was one of The Crazy Gang whose influence in British comedy ranged from The Goon Show to Monty Python. While never as prolific as her husband, Elizabeth penned at least two short stories, “Spikey” and ” ‘arker” under the name Lisbeth Knox in 1924 and 1932, respectively. Under the name Elizabeth Sax Rohmer, she scripted a number of radio and television scripts with her husband. Sadly, no copies of the programs survive and her short fiction remains obscure.

 

Elizabeth Sax Rohmer’s lone novel, Bianca in Black was published in 1958. At the time, her husband was battling poor health and involved in a protracted court case over his literary rights. Strapped for cash, Elizabeth went to work on a novel herself for Thomas Bouregy’s Mystery House imprint in the US and for Ryerson Press in Canada. A paperback edition by Airmont would follow four years later. Elizabeth acknowledged that her husband helped her with the story and writing of the book. While it is clearly his wife’s work primarily, Sax Rohmer’s hand is evident in certain aspects. The story itself has some slight echoes of his 1954 mystery, The Moon is Red.

 

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Wrath of Fu Manchu, Part Two

When Rohmer scholar, Dr. Robert E. Briney compiled a posthumous hardcover collection of the author’s rare and previously uncollected short fiction in the early 1970s, he included three short stories that were first published in This Week magazine in between Rohmer’s last two Fu Manchu novels. The stories were subsequently reprinted in sequence in Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine between January and March 1966 where the latter two stories were retitled. The hardcover collection, The Wrath of Fu Manchu and Other New Stories was first published in the U.K. in 1973 by Tom Stacey. A U.S. mass market paperback edition from DAW Books followed in 1976. The collection was subsequently reprinted in 2001 as part of Allison & Busby’s Fu Manchu Omnibus - Volume 5. Titan Books will reprint the original collection as a trade paperback in March 2016.

The Eyes of Fu Manchu was serialized in two installments in This Week magazine on October 6 and 13, 1957. It first appeared in book form when Dr. Briney added it to the 1970 Ace paperback collection, The Secret of Holm Peel and Other Strange Stories. The story opens with Sir Denis Nayland Smith attending a lecture at the Sorbonne by an American scientist, Dr. Gregory Allen. Dr. Allen is a specialist in the possible chemical means of halting or even reversing the effects of aging. Sir Denis correctly believes Dr. Allen’s research will draw him to the attention of Dr. Fu Manchu. He makes plans to attend Dr. Allen’s lecture at King’s College with Dr. Petrie who is flying in from Cairo.

Rohmer mines one of his own life’s episodes when he encountered and began an extramarital affair with a young bohemian woman while on a voyage to Madeira. Here, Gregory Allen meets a young bohemian woman named Mignon while crossing the English Channel. Mignon is an artist and, upon learning Gregory abandoned his study of art for science, she makes some pointed remarks about his abandoning the bohemian life of freedom and truth for one of compromised values as part of the Establishment. Her words seem to sting Dr. Allen as much as her beauty and youth charm him just as Rohmer, the former bohemian turned established bestselling author and husband must have felt when he began his own affair with a younger free spirit on his voyage to Portugal years before.

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