The Yellow Claw / The Golden Scorpion (Gaston Max Mysteries: Stark House Mystery Classics) - Softcover

Rohmer, Sax

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933586818 ISBN 13: 9781933586816

Publisher: Stark House Press, 2015

Synopsis

Rohmer created Fu Manchu and other superb villains. In these two mysteries, we are introduced to Gaston Max, a Parisian detective and a master of disguise, hot in the pursuit of two criminal masterminds who seek to undermine the very fabric of British society.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

THE YELLOW CLAW Writer Henry Leroux’s receives a late-night visitor, a scantily-clad woman who suddenly dies while Leroux is getting help from the doctor who lives in the flat above. A torn message is found in the dead woman’s hand with the hastily scribbled words, “Mr. King.” Inspector Dunbar is suspicious of Leroux, whose wife is supposedly visiting a friend in Paris—who hasn’t seen her in months. Could this be a lover’s tryst gone wrong? And what of Leroux’s butler, Soames, who has suddenly disappeared? Famed Parisian detective, Gaston Max, is called in, but even Max finds the case particularly baffling. One thing for certain—drugs are involved, and probably opium. The elusive trail leads him to the genial Mr. Gianapolis and the Cave of the Golden Dragon, where addicts seek the solace of the pipe, and where the beautiful and imperious Mahāra holds sway. But who is the elusive Mr. King, whose hand reaches out to bring death—as the yellow claw? THE GOLDEN SCORPION Dr. Keppel Stuart is awakened in the night and sees a cowled figured outside his window. Convinced the next morning that this had all been a dream, he has no idea that he has come under the surveillance of a nefarious Chinaman, the Scorpion, and his followers. Dr. Stuart is an expert on toxicology, but is no match for the feminine whiles of Mlle. Dorian, known to detective Gaston Max as Zāra el-Khalā, “Flower of the Desert.” Max has followed her group from Paris to London, disguised and thought dead by the police. But Max is very much alive, and this time “the foremost criminal investigator in Europe” is on the trail of a mastermind so cunning it takes all of Max’s resources to ferret him out. With the help of Dr. Stuart and Inspector Dunbar, Max pursues Zāra and her mysterious servant, Chunda Lal, little knowing that their master has plans that include the subjugation of the Western World!

About the Author:

Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward, known to readers as Sax Rohmer, was born in Birmingham on February 15, 1883 to a working class Irish Catholic family. He started his career writing songs and comedy sketches for Music Hall revues, selling his first story to Pearson’s Weekly in 1903. His first novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu, originally serialized in 1912, introduced the world to this mysterious and elusive villain, eventually featured in twelve subsequent novels. Rohmer took painstaking care in his arcane research, with many mysteries featuring such occult investigative characters as Gaston Max, “Red” Kerry, Morris Klaw and Paul Harley. Besides also authoring several novels of supernatural horror, toward the end of his career, Rohmer enjoyed another success with a female Fu Manchu known as Sumuru. He married Rose Elizabeth Knox in 1909 and after World War II, they moved to New York, returning to London shortly before Rohmer’s death in London on June 1, 1959, of influenza.

About this edition

• Publisher: Stark House Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1933586818
• ISBN 13: 9781933586816
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 350