Newly illustrated with 11 gritty period photographs.

Sax Rohmer is best-known as the creator of Fu Manchu, but he also wrote a series of pot-boilers about another diabolical criminal mastermind, Sumuru. Sumuru is an even more outlandish villain than Fu Manchu, which makes Nude in Mink even more fun! Sumuru is a glamorous, beautiful but sinister female diabolical criminal mastermind.

Rohmers work is interesting for what it tells us about the fears of its time (and perhaps about the prejudices of our own age). The Sumuru tales deal with anxiety about women. The so-called New Woman of the 1890s caused a great deal of worry. The role of women was clearly changing, but it was not clear where that change was going to lead. And again Rohmer does not paint women as inferior and irrational, but like Fu Manchu he portrays them as representing a differing world-view that might well win out in the end. And Sumuru, like Fu Manchu, is both ruthless and brilliant. There is certainly admiration mixed in with the paranoia. Sumuru is threatening because she is more intelligent than her enemies, and because she has a https://www.tradebit.com knows exactly what it is that she wants to achieve.

Sumurus machinations go beyond mere crime. She intends to create a New World Order, based on the elimination of war, greed and ugliness. This will be a world order dominated by women. Beautiful women. There will be a place for men, but their role will be strictly subordinate.

A conspiracy to abolish war and greed is obviously an appalling threat to civilisation, so clearly she must be stopped. Its up to American journalist Mark Donovan and Dr Steel Maitland, one-time naval surgeon and now a senior operative of the British governments most secret intelligence service, to prevent this woman from destroying the very foundations of our civilisation. Donovan must also save the woman he loves from the clutches of Sumuru. She has been recruited as part of Sumurus secret army.

Sumuru, apart from being a criminal genius, is also a mistress of disguise. In fact no-one knows what she really looks like, so she could be anyone! Its all terribly and breathlessly exciting! Definitely great fun.