A few years back, author F. Paul Wilson, better known for the Adversary Cycle and Repairman Jack series, did a trio of intertwined short stories inspired by pulp yellow-menace tales. In particular, Fu Manchu stories and the collection It’s Raining Corpses in Chinatown, edited by Don Hutchison. I don’t recall where it originally appeared and by the time I heard of it, I believe it was only in e-book format, which I don’t care for.
However, I recently discovered that Wilson has put out a small chapbook, titled Sex Slaves of the Dragon Tong, via print-on-demand that included not just the original short story but two others as a “yellow peril triptych.” So I picked it up.
It’s clearly pulp-inspired, and readers should be aware he follows the style of some authors in how they dealt with the Chinese. There are clear inspirations and nods to other characters.
“Sex Slaves of the Dragon Tong” is what you expect from the title. A third-tier detective, Brad Brannigan, is assigned to find a missing blonde girl who disappeared in Chinatown in San Francisco. The main detective who knows Chinatown is sick with something. A private detective was hired by the girl’s father. As he looks into it, he finds that a few other blonde girls from nearby towns have gone missing. Things get complicated when a 10-year-old, red-haired girl is snatched. Two mysterious men bring Brannigan to their boss, an equally mysterious rich bald man, who wants the girl back.
Brannigan stumbles into the Dragon Tong’s headquarters and is there when the rich, bald man confronts a sinister Asian man referred to only as the Mandarin. The two men seem to know each other. The bald man and his associates leave with the girl, while Brannigan has no choice but to go rescue the girls, 10 of them, from a ship rigged to explode at midnight. Brannigan is a hero, but who is the Mandarin? And he never does learn the name of the bald man or the red-headed girl.
“Part of the Game” focuses on the other police detective mentioned in the first story who was sick. Here you’ll learn what he is sick from, and how it came about.
And in “Dragon’s Tongue,” we focus on the nameless private detective briefly seen in the first story. All we know is he’s an operative of a continental-wide organization. He is summoned to London to meet with a client looking for a piece of jade carved into a dragon’s foot, containing “dragon’s tongue powder,” and heads to New York in pursuit of a sinister Chinese man referred to only as the “Lord of Strange Deaths.” But when he gets to New York, he learns of the strange death of the client. He goes after a local Chinese crimelord, thinking him the same, but that crimelord had encountered someone else. It seems our “Lord of the Strange Deaths” has headed to San Francisco.
There while looking for this Lord, who may also be someone called the “Mandarin”, he meets a strange Chinese girl who claims to be his concubine and wants to escape. In the process, he finds the jade dragon’s claw. But also who the girl really is and more about the Mandarin. And may face his own “strange death.”
Overall, it’s a nice collection of stories. It was pretty clear, to me, who the Mandarin was meant to be, as well as the girl and the characters in the first story. I had to look some things up to figure out who the private detective was in the third story. I don’t think we’ll see any more of these stories, but this was a fun collection.
I’ve enjoyed many of F. Paul Wilson’s works and have reviewed many of them here. Repairman Jack has several pulp influences. Check these out as well.
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