Despite Sax Rohmer's exotic-sounding name, he was born Arthur Sarsfield Ward in Birmingham, of Irish parents. The Fu Manchu thrillers came relatively late in his career (he died in 1959) and were hugely popular in the 1930s, as well as being made into long-forgotten (and probably forgettable) films. Not having read a line of any of them before, I rather expected period hokum on the level of Edgar Rice Burroughs. In fact, the stories are well plotted, move with speed and purpose, and the dialogue, though often dated in tone, is credible and crisply written. In short, they are still good reading and high-class escapism, so much so that I now regret missing the first volume.