Sumuru is a female supervillain created by Sax Rohmer, author of the Fu Manchu series of novels. She leads a secret organisation known as the Order of Our Lady.
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Radio
After the end of World War II, Rohmer was approached by the BBC to do a radio serial. As Fu Manchu was a controversial character, Rohmer used the same basic plots with a female mastermind named Sumuru. The series Shadow of Sumuru was broadcast from 1945-1946 on the BBC Light Programme in eight half-hour shows with Anna Burden and Robert Beatty in the cast.
Novels
In 1950 Rohmer published his radio serial as a novel entitled The Sins of Sumuru. The American Fawcett Gold Medal paperback publishing house printed it under the title Nude in Mink. When the book went into a second printing in a month's time the publisher commissioned a book series with different titles in Great Britain and the USA.
Anthony Boucher described the 1954 installment as "melodrama almost as entertainingly Perelmanesque as the exploits of the evil Doctor." He later praised Sinister Madonna as "outrageously enjoyable," describing it as "critically indefensible, but my God, such fun . . . !"
Films
Harry Alan Towers, who had produced a Fu Manchu film series in the mid-1960s with Christopher Lee, produced two Sumuru films featuring Shirley Eaton as Sumuru.
The 2003 film Sumuru (Alexandra Kamp, directed by Darrell Roodt) took its basic plot premise from the books, but set it in the far future.