The year is 1920. Dr. John Petrie, a physician, and our narrator, meets his friend Denis Nayland Smith who served as British police commissioner in Asia. Smith seems to know all things Asia and the innate ability to get all the support he needs from British government officials. Smith stands for everything good, proper, and most importantly, British. Petrie is, of course, knowledgeable in medicine, forensics, chemistry and an ace with a pistol, for good measure.
Together they must thwart the fiendish arch-criminal Dr. Fu-Manchu's diabolical plan to restore China to its former glory and replace the British Empire with a Chinese one as well as exterminate the white race. Fu is the pulp fiction embodiment of evil, a master of alchemy (for poison gas), a mad genius physician, leader of assassins and vicious animals, a specialist of torture, arts of occult darkness and more.
