John Robert Colombo has long been a fan of the writings of Sax Rohmer, the Anglo-Irish novelist who created the infamous character Dr. Fu Manchu as well as other imaginative master criminals along with their dogged secret-agent nemeses. Rohmer’s vital years are 1883 and 1959 and his publishers liked to boast that his books of mystery fiction were “published simultaneously” in London and New York. Indeed, between the two world wars, he was a very popular writer of fast-moving yarns of mystery and detection. Largely overlooked has been the alluring woman known as Sumuru whose incredible exploits are chronicled in five novels which appeared (in London and New York) throughout the 1950s. The full texts of the English editions of these novels are reprinted in Sax Rohmer’s “The Sumuru Omnibus” with an introduction titled “International Woman of Mystery” contributed by John Robert Colombo. The book has been published by George A. Vanderburgh’s Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, ISBN 978-1-55246-905-7, hard-cover, double-columns, 8.5″ x 11″, 448 pages.
Book Reviews
