Ripper Thrillers

[Mayerling]

'Death Walks in Eastreppes' is indeed a very good mystery. 'The Hands of Mr
Ottermole' is a short story about Ripper-style killings in London. I think it was written before WW1 and its author Thomas Burke is forgotten today. However Ellery Queen praised it, saying 'No finer crime story has ever been written'. I'm not sure of that, but it certainly has a lovely twist.

Thomas Burke wrote short stories about the East End, especially the Chinese and Asiatics in Limehouse. He is best recalled because his story (sorry for the bigoted title) "The Chink and the Child" was the basis of D. W. Griffith's famous silent film "Broken Blossoms" with Lilian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, and Donald Crisp (as the brutal "Battling Burroughs" - a far cry from his Oscar winning role as Roddy McDowall's father in "How Green Was My Valley").

Jeff

[Rosella]

I suppose the Chinese were regarded as 'exotic' in those days, Lascars and opium dens seem to crop up in late Victorian fiction quite a bit! 'How Green Was My Valley' is still a very enjoyable film, I think.

[Mayerling]

I suppose the Chinese were regarded as 'exotic' in those days, Lascars and opium dens seem to crop up in late Victorian fiction quite a bit! 'How Green Was My Valley' is still a very enjoyable film, I think.

They were considered both exotic and sometimes quite villainous. In Doyle's "The Man With the Twisted Lip" a Lascar keeps the police from closing in on the missing Neville St. Clare of Lee by barring the staircase, and when they find "Hugh Boone" in the room that Mrs. St. Clare insists she saw her husband, the police arrest the Lascar as well as "Boone".

I love that story. It taught me never to sneer at pocket change.

The views of the negative stereotype lasted way into this century (not helped by the war against Japan in World War II and the rise of Communist China as a world power). The best example I can think of in English popular literature is Sax Rohmer's series of novels about Dr. Fu Manchu, and his desire to rule the world ("The World Shall Hear From Me Again!!).

Jeff