Dr Syn rides again in a Wildside Mystery Classics edition. Russell Thorndyke’s story of smuggling on Romney Marsh is as fresh now as it was when Fu-Manchu first read it as a boy. Sadly, this edition is besmirched by slipshod copy editing; page 51 is missing entirely and the text is shot through with errors and omissions. The miserable editor should be triced up to the nearest grating and flogged to a proper sense of duty towards the readership.

Fu-Manchu can recommend this story to any hot-blooded young person who thrills to the horrible doings of a piratical band of Marshmen.

Here’s to the feet wot have walked the plank,

Yo ho! for the dead man’s throttle.

And here’s to the corpses floating round in the tank,

And the deads man's teeth in the bottle.

For a pound of gunshot tied to his feet,

And a ragged bit of sail for a winding sheet;

Then the signal goes with a bang and a flash,

And overboard you go with an horrible splash.

And all that isn’t swallowed by the sharks outside,

Stands up again upon its feet upon the running tide;

And it keeps a bowin’ gently, and a lookin’ with surprise

At each little crab a scramblin’ from the sockets of its eyes.