The Complete Sumuru!
Whom All Men Fear, & No Man Knows
Dustwrapper Art from the Herbert Jenkins Editions
together with the texts from the dustwrapper flaps
Click on any Picture for a Larger Image of the Jacket
Volume One: The Sins of Sumuru, Jenkins, 1950.
Who was Sumuru?
It was said that she was an ice-cold, fascinating genius whose hypnotic powers impelled all men to do her bidding. It was said she was a fanatic who ruled her followers with oriental despotis. It was said . . .
But what was the truth? Nobody really knew althugh two men knew part of it -- sir Miles Tristram, just returned from Cairo, &am Dr. Steel Maitland of the Secret Service. But Tristram died by the hand of a beautiful woman & his secret died with him.
That left Maitland alone to follow the trail through Sumuru's shadowy underworld & it almost proved to be a task more than he could handle.
In Sins of Sumuru, Sax Rohmer, creator of the famous Fu Manchu novels, has written another masterly storo of fear & excitement.
Volume Two: The Slaves of Sumuru, Jenkins, 1952.
Of Sins of Sumuru, the Manchester Evening News wrote: "Dr. Fu Manchu, Sax Rohmer's celebrated character, gives way to a woman -- Sumuru --in this new novel. But Rohmer's sure touch remains. His feminine epitome of wickedness is as fine a piece of imaginative character drawing as the notorious doctor, & the suspense of a well-knit plot neer relaxes one iota."
Slaves of Sumurai is another equally absorbing of Rohmer's stories of mystery & imagination -- a story of murder & violence -- again featuring the enigmatic woman who all men feared & few men knew.
Volume Three: Virgin in Flames, Jenkins, 1953.
Jamaica -- the conflux of Western realism & jungle voodoo -- was the perfect setting for Sumuru, the beautiful, amoral genius long sought by Scotland Yard & the F.B.I. -- the woman to whom all men were as moths to a flame. Few knew from whence she came or the secret of her power, & those what had known, died. Others feared to know.
But there were two men who wanted to know more. Inspector Gilligan of Scotland Yard, who was intrigued by the age-old significance of a lizard nailed to a man's door, & Lance Harkness, for whom life held but two things, science & the woman he loved. And Sumuru threatened destuction to both.
Sumuru's popularitiy with readers of crime fiction now rivals that of Rohmer's other great creation -- Fu Manchu, & this story of taut suspense tells another chapter from her infamous career.
Volume Four: Sand & Satin, A Sumuru Story Jenkins, 1955.
A foggy night in London -- the fog curling in eddies round buildings, masking the street-lamps & slowing the traffic to a crawl. The door of Dick Carteret's car opens suddenly & a girl climbs in without invitation. Carteret is interested -- as any man would be -- for here are both beauty & distress, & there is no mistaking either. The drive westward, but as they near Sloane Square the girl slips from the car as abruptly as she had come & disappears into the murk of the night. Almost immediately, Carteret is accosted by a man claiming to be a doctor in search of an escaped young woman mental patient -- an unlikely story not made more probable biy the presence of an ape-like bodyguard who accompanies the doctor. Intrigued, Carteret is at first evasive &, later, elusive.
So opens Sax Rohmer's latest novel, a story of the exquisite, amoral Sumuru, tthe beauty of whose body drives men to commit the crimes of vice & violence on which her nature feeds.
As an evil genious of fiction, Sumuru is as compelling a character as Rohmer's other famous creation, Dr. Fu Manchu.
Volume Five: Sinister Madonna: A Sumurai Story, Jenkins, 1956.
The unknown man lay gravely ill in the little Surrey hospital. Seated at his bedside a police-sergeat took shorthand notes of the jumble of words that tumbled from his lips. 'The Puma,' 'Ma Leech.' Had these names any significance, or were they jsut the envention of a delirious brain?
The County Police left the decisioin to Scotland Yard & early next morning Inspector Gilligan arrived from London. But he was too late; the patient had disappeared from his hospital bed. Simultaneous with this discovery came the news that a mansion nearby had been broken into & an oriental dagger stolen. What connection had the one event with the other -- if any?
The theft of the dagger could be meaningless or it could mean much. Gilligan, knowing the ways of Sumuru, had no real doubts. He had crossed swords before wit this oriental woman who loved crime for its own sake, who commanded men & they obeyed, & who killed them as readily as she enchanted them. The events of the past night were branded with an arrogance that could not be mistaken.
Sax Rohmer, who recently sold the American television rights to his early novels for the highest sum ever paid for such rights is one of the really great figures in the world of mystery fiction. This novel must rank with the best that he has written.
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