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Max, Gaston. Gaston Max was created by “Sax Rohmer,” the pseudonym of Arthur Sarsfield Ward (Bimbâshi Barûk, Bazarada, Major Bernard de Treville, Fu Manchu (I), Paul Harley, Red Kerry, Moris Klaw, Captain O’Hagan, Abu Tabah), and appeared in four novels and six radio plays from 1915 to 1943, beginning with “The Yellow Claw” (Lippincott’s Magazine, Feb. 1915).

Gaston Max is "the greatest criminal investigator in Europe." He is a dapper Frenchman with almost uncanny abilities of disguise and mimicry. Indeed, his mastery of disguise is so good that those who know him well are fooled by him when he fakes his death and pretends to be Charles Malet, a simple cab driver. He is a member of the Paris Police, but in the novels he is called on to help Detective-Inspector Dunbar of Scotland Yard. Max first jousts with Mr. King, a Yellow Peril who deals in drugs and is the head of a group called the Sublime Order. Max then tangles with the Golden Scorpion, who is an agent of Fu Manchu (I), although Fu is never named in the story. Then Max goes up against a Mad Scientist whose inventions create seemingly supernatural beings, such as vampires, and who has a death ray. And, later still, Max encounters Anubis, a Big-Headed Dwarf Genius who wants to CONQUER THE WORLD!

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