THE FIRE GODDESS (Sax Rohmer's other criminal mastermind, Sumuru)
From December 1952, this was the third in Sax Rohmer's series of five books about Sumuru. This book is so sluggish and disappointing that it hurt my feelings. I felt like a school teacher getting an essay from a student who hadn't done any research but just babbled on for pages about nothing in particular to fill space. For the first hundred pages or so, I kept going back at the end of each chapter because I thought SOMETHING must have happened, but no... About halfway through, things perk up a bit. There are small flashes here and there of the vivid imagination and fervor that made Sax Rohmer's early books such an intense reading experience. A few scenes are genuinely creepy, but then things quickly sink down in languid torpor again.
International cult leader Sumuru is thinking vaguely about stopping attempts to open a bauxite mine near her property in Jamaica. A young American geologist with the dashing name of Lance Harkness is starting to poke around, and at the same time, Inspector Gilligan from Scotland Yard arrives to investigate some suspicious voodoo type shenanigans going on. One of Sumuru's acolytes, a mamaloi priestess named Melisande has been using voodoo a bit too openly, and her highness disapproves. All this takes forever to be revealed, and not in a suspenseful way, either. It's just that characters take forever to figure things out and then stall interminably before they reluctantly decide to do anything. Long glowing descriptions of luxurious furnishings don`t exactly give the book any briskness, either.
I tell you, if Sir Denis Nayland Smith had been assigned to this case, he would have Sumuru fighting for her freedom in two chapters or less, and she would be damn lucky not to be hauled away in cuffs on the last page. And I would hate to see Sumuru go toe to toe with Fah Lo Suee... the fur would fly!
Much of the problem with this series is that Sax Rohmer himself seemed to have conflicting feelings about his female mastermind. For all the talk about her brilliant mind and towering genius, all we ever see is scene after scene of Sumuru lounging about in one revealing outfit after another, postponing any decisive actions until it`s too late. She is the worst tease in history, flaunting her bod to stun men into hopelessly dazed submission. And Sumuru is not above granting sex now and then to get a guy firmly under her control. (Drake Roscoe, the tough American intelligence agent from the previous book, signed up with her organization with the idea he could play along and overthrow her. Instead, he ends up as hopelessly pussywhipped as any high school senior under a girlfriend's thumb.)
Romance has always been an important factor in Rohmer's plotting. Usually, it's convincing and a refreshing change from the usually repressed pulp heroes. Rohmer's characters not only are attracted, they genuinely fall in love like real human beings. In this particular case, though, the love interest falls flat. Good old Lance is smitten with young colleen Derry Kearney but she seems to be so tangled up in a confused halfway state between old fashioned morals and modern hedonism that she keeps him waiting the whole book. The most satisfaction he gets is seeing her walk into a fire and have her robe burned right off, leaving her stark nekkid.
This unusual practice is the initiation ceremony of the Jamaican branch of Sumuru's cult. It seems to be intended to provide, first a chill of alarm that a beautiful young woman is about to die painfully; and then a nice little cheap thrill, as she stands there unharmed in her birthday suit. (Happy birthday, Derry!) What bugs me is that no explanation is given how the Sumurites do this; Derry just says it's a trick she can't reveal.
The other satisfying thrill is that Our Lady has resumed her use of the infamous 'rigor kubus', a rare fungus which literally turns its victims to stone. This provides a few startling moments and a haunting final image. Along with a brief scene where Sumuru submits a suspected traitor to (rather mild) torture, the strange petrifying death helps link the sinister Madonna to Sax Rohmer's much better known arch-villain.