Sax Rohmer's Moon of Madness

Moon of Madness is a 1927 Sax Rohmer thriller.

Sax Rohmer (1883-1959) is best known as the creator of Dr Fu Manchu but he wrote a lot of other books in a number of genres. He wrote some great gothic horror and some fine occult thrillers. He also wrote straightforward spy thrillers such as Moon of Madness.

I like the spy fiction of the 1920s and 1930s because it has a refreshingly different tone compared to the endless Cold War spy thrillers of the 50s, 60s and 70s.

In Moon of Madness the enemy is the communists, the Bolsheviks, but it still has that interwar period flavour. And like so many of the spy novels of that period it features an amateur spy. In fact there are three spies on the side of the good guys. One is a professional, war hero Major O’Shea. The second is the narrator, George Decies. The third is a cute frivolous high-spirited eighteen-year-old girl, Nanette. But they all, even the professional, have that delightful British “muddling through” spirit.

The setting is Madeira, a suitably exotic and neutral locale for a spy thriller. A smooth Portuguese ladies’ man named de Cunha has been romancing Nanette. She should exercise more caution in these matters but she’s young and she wants to have fun. She’s not in love with de Cunha. She has set her sights on Major O’Shea. O’Shea is attracted to Nanette but he’s a man who agonises over moral dilemmas and points of honour and he’s convinced himself that it would be dishonourable to declare his love for the girl. One also suspects that’s just a little given to indulging in noble self-sacrifice.

What’s at stake is a bundle of letters written by a certain royal personage. If they fall into the hands of the Bolsheviks governments could fall, it might even mean a war.

To be honest I don’t think the straightforward spy thriller was Rohmer’s forte. The plot is rather thin. He was at his best when his plots were enlivened by bizarre backgrounds and outlandish setups, such as ongoing struggles with evil geniuses or weird possibly supernatural elements.

The hero-worship towards Major O’Shea displayed by the narrator can get a mite embarrassing. Especially given that O’Shea really doesn’t come across as such a brilliant splendid chap. O’Shea thinks he’s being terribly noble by not declaring his love for Nanette when in fact he’s causing her totally unnecessary emotional pain. And the only reason for his reticence appears to be an over-developed obsession with being virtuous and self-sacrificing. The reader feels like screaming at him to just take the girl in his arms, kiss her and tell her that he loves her. If he’d done that at the beginning a lot of suffering could have been avoided.

O’Shea also seems far from being a super-spy. He makes some elementary mistakes.

Of course the fact that O’Shea doesn’t live up to the narrator’s inflated estimate of him does add a slightly interesting touch.

This is a competent but fairly routine spy thriller. Worth a look, but he wrote so many much better books. Sax Rohmer was a great writer whose work is very much worth seeking out but Moon of Madness is not the best place to start.

I’ve reviewed a lot of Sax Rohmer’s stuff. The Bride of Fu Manchu and The Mask of Fu Manchu are good mid-period Fu Manchu books. The Dream Detective is an excellent collection of occult detective stories. The Leopard Couch and Brood of the Witch-Queen are typical of his excellent gothic horror fiction/weird fiction. The Sins of Sumuru introduces his final creation, the glamorous female diabolical criminal mastermind Sumuru. Sumuru wants to eliminate violence from the world and she doesn’t care how many people she has to kill to achieve her objective.

Whitley Strieber’s The Hunger

Whitley Strieber’s novel The Hunger was published in 1981. In 1983 there was a celebrated movie adaptation which is one of those love it or hate it movies (I love it).

John Blaylock and Miriam are hunting. John’s target is Faye, a teenaged girl. Miriam’s target is Faye’s boyfriend. If one of these teenagers suddenly disappeared questions might get asked. If they both disappear at the same time it will be assumed that they ran off together. It is important that no questions should get asked. Good clean kills with no traces left, that’s the objective.

John and Miriam are very much in love. They’re a typical couple except that Miriam is a bit older than John. Several thousand years older. John isn’t even 200 years old. John and Miriam are vampires.

John has noticed something recently, something slightly disturbing. He doesn’t know what it means. Miriam knows exactly what it means. She has been dreading this. She loves John. She has loved all of them, and has lost all of them. Like the others John is not a true vampire. Miriam is sure there must be a way to make her lovers immortal like herself. She can’t go on losing those she loves after only a few centuries.

She suspects that Dr Sarah Roberts might have accidentally stumbled upon the key. Sarah is a sleep researcher and has discovered something extraordinary about the links between sleep and ageing. Persuading Sarah to help her will be tricky, but it could be done.

The clever thing here is that even when Sarah becomes totally enmeshed in Miriam’s scheme she has no idea that she is dealing with a vampire. Miriam does something very unexpected. Something that you do not expect a vampire to do. She deliberately puts herself in the hands of scientists (Sarah and her team). She allows them to study her, knowing that they are very quickly going to realise that there are things about her that are wildly outside the normal human parameters. Her blood composition is bizarre. Her sleep patterns are bizarre.

But what’s really clever about Miriam’s scheme is that the scientists are not going to realise that she’s a vampire. That possibility will never occur to them, it could never occur to them, because vampires do not exist. And she has been very careful to ensure that they do not have possession of a single item of knowledge about her that might suggest the possibility that she is non-human. She appears to be a 30-year-old woman so that’s what they assume she is. They do not suspect that she is thousands of years old. They know nothing of her blood-drinking. They have no way of knowing that she has killed thousands of times. And they do not for a second suspect that she might be dangerous.

It’s all part of Miriam’s plan to draw Sarah in.

There are three separate species in this book. There are the humans of course. There’s Miriam. She is a true vampire. She is not human. She belongs to a closely related but distinct species. And there are the transformed vampires, such as John Blaylock. They are hybrids. The transformation has made them vampires of a sort. They have many of the characteristics of vampires. But they are not true vampires. They are both vampire and human.

Strieber uses this fact to explore the moral issues connected to vampirism in interesting ways. Miriam fees no remorse whatsoever about killing humans in order to feed. She likes humans. She is genuinely fond of them and in some ways she admires them. But she regards them the way a farmer regards his livestock. He may be quite fond of his cows but he accepts that the time will come when they have to be eaten. Miriam does not consider herself to be a murderess. To some extent she regards transformed humans such as John Blaylock as much-loved pets. We might love a dog very much but the dog is a pet, not a human lover.

John has never quite come to terms with the need to kill because he is aware that he is still partly human. It feels like cannibalism. It feels like murder. He has become accustomed to it, reconciled to it, he has even come to enjoy the hunt, but he is still not entirely comfortable with it.

The human scientists and doctors have no more respect for Miriam’s rights than she has for her victims. They think of her the way they think of their lab animals. As far as they’re concerned she has no more rights than one of the rhesus monkeys on which they experiment. And they treat her this way even though they have no knowledge of her true nature. They think she’s human. They just think that she is so unusual that they are justified in treating her like a lab rat. The humans in this story are morally no better than the vampires.

The book is very concerned with morality but treats the subject in a very complex and provocative way.

This is also a story about love and loss, but love of an unusual kind.

Strieber creates a very complicated and elaborate and original vampire mythology, but it’s not a mythology as such. This is a science fiction novel. He also gives Miriam and John very detailed backstories. None of these things would have worked in a movie so the 1983 movie very wisely focuses on the emotional implications of the story. The novel and the movie are therefore very very different but I love them both equally.

The Hunger is a fascinating science fiction vampire tale. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the movie, The Hunger (1983).

Charles Burgess's The Other Woman

The Other Woman is a 1960 crime novel by Charles Burgess. He’s a seriously obscure writer who seems to have written only one other novel. He also wrote some true crime stuff in the late 40s.


The Other Woman was originally published by Beacon so you might be expecting this to be crime with a healthy dash of sleaze. It isn’t really, but there is some moderately steamy sex. This is not a particularly hardboiled story but it does have some noir flavouring.

Early on the set-up seems to be suggesting that we’re in for yet another riff on Double Indemnity but that’s not how it plays out. In Double Indemnity we know the identity of the murderers right from the start. The Other Woman is more of an old-fashioned murder mystery. There is a murder but we don’t know the killer’s identity. The murder method is not as straightforward as it appears to be and alibis are important. There is a puzzle to be unravelled.

It begins in a small town in Florida. John Royal wants real estate agent Neil Cowen to arrange the purchase of a property which will be the site of a major housing development. Royal is an old man and very very rich. Royal’s wife Emmaline is thirty years his junior, blonde and gorgeous. And almost certainly dangerous. The kind of gal who is likely to turn out to be a femme fatale.

Neil has a successful business. He’s a respected member of the community. He’s happily married with a kid. He would be crazy even to think of getting mixed up with Emmaline Royal. But by the next day he and Emmaline are getting it on in the back seat of Neil’s car.

Neil can’t stop himself. He has never met a woman as hot and as gorgeous as Emmaline.

Then something happens that causes Neil to have second thoughts although by now it may be way too late.

Of course there is a murder. There is one odd detail at the murder scene that worries Lieutenant Gainey just a little. It seems somehow wrong but he can’t figure out how it could possibly be significant.

There’s one obvious suspect but Lieutenant Gainey is well aware that there is no real evidence.

A regular guy led astray by an uncontrollable lust for a woman is certainly classic noir stuff. Neil really is a totally decent guy and he never does figure out how he succumbed to temptation. The fact that Emmaline might be the kind of gal who knows exactly how to persuade the most reluctant man to fall for her charms, and that he might just be the latest in a string of men who have danced to her siren song, doesn’t occur to him. He thinks that a smokin’ hot classy rich dame is just waiting for the chance to jump into bed with a second-rate small town real estate agent.

Of course while we know that Emmaline is a temptress that doesn’t mean she’s a murderess. There are other suspects. There are quite a few suspicious characters lurking about. There’s a mystery woman.

As a noir novel it works reasonably well.

As a straightforward murder mystery it’s also reasonably successful.

The Other Woman is routine stuff but it’s enjoyable. A harmless time killer.

Michael Crichton’s The Terminal Man

Michael Crichton’s science fiction techno-thriller The Terminal Man was published in 1972.

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) had broken through as a bestselling author with The Andromeda Strain in 1969. The Terminal Man sees Crichton once again drawing on his medical training (he qualified as a doctor but never practised). The Terminal Man is also the sort of thing Crichton really enjoyed doing - dealing with science and technology that already existed or was very very likely to exist in the near future.

Harry Benson suffers from psychomotor epilepsy. He has seizures but they affect his behaviour rather than having physical manifestations. He has blackouts lasting several hours and during those times he becomes extreme violent. He has already been in trouble with the police and now he has committed a brutal assault that could land him in prison. The University Hospital Neuro-Psychiatric Service (NPS) has offered him experimental brain surgery that will probably prevent these seizures.

The team at NPS believe that it’s the seizures that lead Benson, an otherwise peaceable man, to commit acts of extreme violence.

Benson will be the first human to undergo the procedure. The head surgeon, Dr Ellis, is very confident.

The team’s head psychiatrist, Dr Janet Ross, is not so sure. Benson has other problems. He has delusions. He is a brilliant but unstable computer technician and he believes that the machines are taking over. He is borderline psychotic. Dr Ross fear that as a result the results of the operation will be unpredictable. It might make Benson worse.

The operation involves planting electrodes in the brain, then later monitoring the brain waves to find out which electrodes will prevent seizures. When a seizure is coming on the electrode stimulates the appropriate area of the brain and the seizure is halted in its tracks.

The doctors overlooked a couple of things. These electrical stimulations can be pleasant. Very pleasant. Like an orgasm. And they overlooked the possibility that Benson could learn to provoke those stimulations. Which would mean he could just go on continually giving himself these stimuli. Which would in turn lead to a kind of brain overload which would provoke a seizure. And those seizures cause Benson to become uncontrollably and brutally violent. The NPS computer experts are confident none of these things can actually happen. Then they look at Benson’s brain waves and realise it is already happening.

And then Benson escapes from the hospital. Another thing that was overlooked was that Benson is a very very smart guy.

Now it’s a race against time. The computer predicts that within six hours Benson will reach that tip-over point and have a major seizure. Somebody could get very seriously hurt. The police will almost certainly become involved. There will be a public outcry about irresponsible scientists playing around with mind control. Dr Ellis’s career will be in ruins. The NPS may be shut down.

And Benson is psychotic. He has paranoid delusions about machines taking over the world. It is impossible to predict where he might go and what he might do. And he’s smart enough to cover his tracks.

This is not a mad scientist tale or even a warning about scientists playing God. Crichton was certainly not anti-science. It’s more a warning that the future can be predicted only up to a point. Society is too complex and human beings are too complex to allow accurate predictions. Any complex system is inherently unpredictable. Crichton isn’t suggesting that scientific and technological progress is bad but he is suggesting that a considerable degree of caution is required.

There’s also some fascinating and remarkably prescient speculation about machine intelligence being a dead end. It might turn out that genuine artificial intelligence will have to be biologically based rather than electronic. That’s one of the themes of the book - enhancing or modifying the brain has more potential than mere machines. That’s what Benson has done - he has learnt to modify his own brain function. Unfortunately he’s done in a chaotic manner that may lead to disaster.

This is classic Crichton - lots of fascinating technical stuff presented in an understandable manner, some ethical quandaries and a tense fast-moving thriller plot. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Crichton's The Andromeda Strain and Scratch One.

John Flagg's Murder in Monaco

Murder in Monaco is a 1957 John Flagg thriller. American writer John Gearon wrote eight espionage/crime thrillers between 1950 and 1961 mostly using the pseudonym John Flagg. All were published as Fawcett Gold Medal editions.

Murder in Monaco is one of several that feature ex-CIA agent Hart Muldoon. The somewhat cynical and slightly embittered Muldoon now works as a freelancer and private detective, mostly in Europe, mostly in glamorous locales. The locales may be glamorous but his cases tend to be sordid. He has a knack for getting mixed up in with very powerful, very ruthless, very corrupt criminals.

This time Muldoon is offered a lot of money for a job but is given no details. That’s how he meets Nancy Trippe, in Monaco. And becomes aware of The National Alert, published by Charles Pless. The National Alert is a scandal sheet and it’s a glossy high-profile very profitable scandal sheet. Some threats have been made but the nature of the threats is obscure.

Of course there’s a murder. Blackmail might be an obvious motive but revenge is a definite possibility as well The National Alert has ruined reputations and destroyed lives. And there are so many emotional and sexual intrigues among the circle of possible suspects. Love and lust must be considered as motives. And one must never forget greed.

There are four women, they’re all suspects and they all have motives and they’re all dangerous in very different ways. Alva is a very successful middle-aged writer with some scandals in her past and a taste for handsome young men. Nancy Trippe is a nymphomaniac and an obvious femme fatale type. Myra is a timid little mouse. They’re always dangerous - all those repressed passions. And Amy is sweet and innocent. Muldoon has been a private eye for a long time. He knows you never trust sweet and innocent.

There are quite a few men with motives as well. Harold is a gigolo and he hasn’t been loyal to the woman who assumes that she owns him. There’s ex-Governor Thorne, a politician whose sister has a scandalous past. There’s Black. He’s a private eye, he’s ex-FBI, and he’s very shady. Plus the crazy unstable American named Cooladge. And Marius, who has wide-ranging business interests, none of then legal.

Nobody wants the cops involved. They all have sound reasons for wanting his whole affair handled discreetly.

Muldoon doesn’t actually have a client yet but he’s confident that if he sticks around he’ll get one, and it’s likely to be a big payday for him.

This is not noir fiction but there is plenty of corruption and plenty of sleaze and decadence. There are ruthless rich people, and ruthless poor people who to become rich people. Almost all the characters have at some stage jumped into bed with someone they should have kept away from.

There’s not much action but there is decent suspense.

Muldoon is a fine hero. He’s at best moderately honest. He’s ethically flexible. He’s mildly interested in seeing justice done but he’s very interested in getting paid. He’s by no means a bad guy. He’s no anti-hero and he’s definitely no thug. But he does have to pay the rent. A man has to prioritise. He likes women and if they’re available he won’t say no. He certainly isn’t going to say no to the cute little Hungarian blonde. She looks very appealing in her scanty bikini. She looks even more appealing out of it.

Murder in Monaco is fine entertaining stuff. Highly recommended.

I’ve read a whole bunch of John Flagg’s thrillers and I’ve enjoyed all of them. I’ve read a whole bunch of John Flagg’s thrillers and I’ve enjoyed all of them. Some are spy thrillers and some, such as Murder in Monaco, are more in the PI thriller mould but the exotic settings will give them appeal for spy fans.  His two earlier Hart Muldoon books, Woman of Cairo and Dear, Deadly Beloved, are both excellent. I also very much liked his non-Hart Muldoon thrillers The Persian Cat, Death and the Naked Lady and The Lady and the Cheetah.

Golden Age Sheena: The Best Of The Queen Of The Jungle: 1

Golden Age Sheena: The Best Of The Queen Of The Jungle: volume 1 (published by Devil’s Due Publishing) collects eleven of the very early Sheena comic-strip adventures from Jumbo Comics. These adventures date from 1938 to 1946.

Before Vampirella, even before Wonder Woman, there was Sheena: The Queen Of The Jungle. She was the first-ever comic-book action heroine. She made her first appearance in 1938. She was not quite the first fictional action heroine (C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry beat her to the punch) but Sheena established the glamorous sexy action heroine as a viable commercial proposition.

Sheena later appeared in prose stories, there was a 1950s TV series and a much later TV series as well, and there was the excellent and very very underrated 1984 Sheena movie with Tanya Roberts.

Sheena was created by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger.

The comics in this collection don’t include the backstory but Sheena is of course basically a girl Tarzan. After her father’s death in the African jungle his daughter is raised by a tribal witch-doctor (rather than apes). She was just old enough at the time to have learnt fluent English and now she is steeped in the lore of the jungle. She has her own queendom.

She battles an extraordinary array of bad guys, assisted by great white hunter Bob Reynolds. The nature of their relationship is made fairly obvious - at one stage we see then putting the finishing touches to their new jungle tree-house love nest. Sheena always refers to Bob as her mate. There’s no question that they are living together as man and wife although they are not married. The 1950s TV series by contrast had to go to great lengths to convince the audience that there was no hanky-panky going on.

One thing that is a bit startling about the early Sheena comics is Sheena’s ruthlessness. She is a killer. She’s one of the good guys but if necessary she kills bad guys without a second’s hesitation or remorse. And she kills quite regularly.

It’s customary to preface a review such as this by making a grovelling apology for the material’s lack of political acceptability. I’m obviously not going to do that. Sheena would never have apologised for herself and I’m not going to insult her by doing so on her behalf. If you’re the sort of person who worries about ideological acceptability you’re not going to enjoy this book anyway.

In Slashing Fangs a notorious crook is trying to cheat a tribe out of the profits from their tobacco crop. The crook turns the tribe against Sheena and she discovers that at dinner that night she’s going to be the main item on the menu.

In Meat for the Cat-Pack Sheena and Bob discover a lost world ruled over by a rather nasty queen. Sheena will have to battle not just human enemies but both terrestrial and aquatic monsters. Considerable mayhem and bloodshed ensues.

In the next story Sheena and Bob get mixed up with town folk and circus folk, and indirectly in a murder case. The real trouble is caused by the fact that Sheena has a double. This lands her in difficulties with two of the local tribes.

In the following story Sheena encounters yet another double. This time it’s part of a villainous plan to convince the local tribes that Sheena is dead. This will allow the villains to enrich themselves.

Next up is an adventure which sees Sheena up against slavers, led by the deliciously wicked African queen Hawkina.

In Death Kraal of the Mastodons an ageing chief imparts secret to Sheena - the location of an elephant’s graveyard and immense quantities of ivory. Others, motivated by greed, want that secret. And Bob is plunged into madness by a close brush with death. There’s a wicked Bad Girl to deal with as well.

Sheena battles slavers again in The Slave Brand of Hassan Bey and there are riverboat battles as well.

In Derelict of the Slave Kings Sheena encounters a very nasty sadistic female and a young woman terrorised by her aunt and uncle. There’s a huge shipment of diamonds at stake.

Then we move on to The Beasts That Dawn Begot. It appeared in 1946. Five years later it was reprinted in Sheena, in a heavily censored form. Both versions are printed here. Sheena was a major target of those seeking to force comics to become squeaky clean. It’s amusing to see that the artwork was modified to make Sheena’s costume more modest. Those breasts of hers might have inflamed the passions of innocent young lads. It’s a fun story in its uncensored form, with some very cool monsters and a memorable villainess.

This volume also includes a couple of Sheena prose stories. Sheena and the Flaming Pyre of Doom (by Tom Alexander) is fun, with an island under a death spell ruled by a Diamond Goddess. Sheena and the Howling Horror is a rather dull story which begins with an awful howling noise in the jungle.

The Sheena comics really are so much fun. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the 1984 Sheena movie (which I adore) and the 1955 Sheena Queen of the Jungle TV series (which is worth seeing just for the amazing Irish McCalla in the title role).

Charles Williams' River Girl

River Girl, published in 1951, was the third novel by Charles Williams. Earlier that year he had had a major bestseller with Hill Girl.

Jack Marshall is a crooked deputy sheriff in a small town. He’s crooked in a small way. The sheriff, Buford, is crooked in a big way. They’re both under pressure from a crusading preacher.

Marshall is unhappily married and in debt and he’s disillusioned. Maybe a fishing trip will help.

That’s where he meets Doris. Doris and her husband Roger Spevlin live in a small shack at the far end of the lake. There’s something odd about them. They don’t talk the right way, the way people living in a remote shack eking out a living from trapping catfish should talk.

Doris is young and very beautiful but she’s very much on edge. And obviously very lonely. Marshall knows he should stay away from her. He also knows that he won’t.

Buford and Marshall are facing a major problem - a grand jury that could potentially blow the lid off the town’s corruption. That preacher, Soames, is planning to lead a moral crusade.

And there’s another problem. That girl in Abbie Bell’s whorehouse. That’s a scandal that will have to be hushed up.

All of these things - the grand jury, the young whore, Marshall’s obsession with Doris Spevlin - will intersect in interesting unpredictable ways.

The last thing Jack Marshall should do at this point in time is sleep with Doris Spevlin. But of course he does. They fall in love. Doris needs rescuing and Marshall starts to plan crazy ways of rescuing her. It all blows up in his face.

This is very much much noir fiction. Jack Marshall is a classic noir protagonist. He’s neither a good man nor a bad man. He’s a corrupt cop and he’s cynical but on the other hand he’s not violent. He has no desire to hurt anyone. He just wants to take his bribes (mostly to keep his status-obsessed wife happy) and be left alone and to spend as much time as possible fishing. He really does fall deeply for Doris. He really is trying to be a knight in shining armour although of course in payment for his trouble he expects to get the girl.

Jack’s biggest weakness is that he’s smart but not quite smart enough to get away with his complicated schemes.

Doris belongs to what I think of as the “innocent femme fatale” sub-type. She’s not a bad girl but she’s trouble and Jack should run away from her as fast as he can. Although she’s the one who leads Jack to disaster she’s perhaps the closest thing this book has to a reasonably admirable character.

Dinah is more of a classic femme fatale. She’s Buford’s mistress. She’s beautiful, glamorous, sexy and clever. She takes one look at Jack Marshall and decides he’s a big, dumb, hulking thug. That’s OK. Big, dumb, hulking thugs excite her quite a bit. Then she realises that he’s clever and devious. Now she’s really excited. With Dinah what you see is what you get. She looks like a very high-priced whore which is in practice what she is. But then she doesn’t pretend to be a Sunday school teacher.

Buford is not quite a straight-out villain. He’s as crooked as they come but his corruption is relatively harmless. As far as he’s concerned if a man wants to have a drink after hours or place a few bets or have a bit of fun with the girls at Miss Abbie’s cat house there’s no harm in any of that. By taking bribes to let those things happen he’s just allowing people to enjoy themselves. He would never take a bribe from a murder or an armed robber.

There aren’t any out-and-out villains in this story. All the characters are morally ambiguous without being evil.

Since this is noir fiction there is of course a sense of impending doom. Jack and Doris are like fish who’ve taken the bait.They can struggle but there’s no escape. It’s hard to see any way out for them. The odds are just stacked against them. All they have is their love but that may not be enough.

River Girl is top-notch noir fiction. Highly recommended.

Stark House have paired this one with another Williams classic, Nothing in Her Way.