Dr. Jules de Grandin is one of the best-known occult detectives, though probably overshadowed today. Created by Seabury Quinn (1889-1969), de Grandin is probably his best-known work and series. A lawyer by training, who specialized in mortuary law, Quinn was an editor and writer within the funeral trade, but also wrote fiction on the side.
De Grandin ran for over 90 stories in Weird Tales from 1925 to 1951, and as I understand it was very popular, more so than Robert E. Howard‘s Conan or H.P. Lovecraft‘s works. De Grandin’s stories were often cover featured (about 60 of them!), usually with Margaret Brundage artwork.
De Grandin is both a medical doctor and a former agent of the French Surete, and is like a blonde Hercule Poirot, with his strange French sayings. Similar to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, he lives in semi-retirement with his friend Dr. Trowbridge in Harrisonville, N.J., where most stories are set. For such a small town, a lot of weird things happened there. Often they find that the cases are not supernatural, but are caused by evil, depraved people.
Rounding out the characters, there is also Trowbridge’s housekeeper, Nora McGinnis as well as Jeremy Costello of the Harrisonville PD. He usually brings them most of the cases they deal with.
While most were short stories, there was one serialized novel, The Devil’s Bride, which had a sinister group kidnapping a girl from Harrisonville to be the bride of the devil they worshiped.
In 1966, Arkham House published a collection of 10 stories as The Phantom Fighter.
I discovered him when I obtained the six paperback collections published by Popular Library and edited by Robert Weinberg. I would later learn that he had planned for a further six, but poor sales prevented that. Weinberg would reprint two stories intended for that second series in his Lost Fantasies #9, and a third appeared in Incredible Adventures #2.
The Popular Library’s collections were:
- Adventures of Jules de Grandin (1976)
- The Casebook of Jules de Grandin (1976)
- The Skeleton Closet of Jules de Grandin (1976)
- The Devil’s Bride (1976)
- Hellfire Files of Jules de Grandin (1976)
- Horror Chambers of Jules de Grandin (1977)
The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box has published a complete set, but it’s a bit pricey. I really wish someone would come out with a more affordable complete set. Which happened more recently when Nightshade Books put out a complete set in 5 volumes, plus a recent “best of” collection.
As to new stories, I’ve only seen him appear in a few stories in the Tales of the Shadowmen collections. I’d certainly love to see more new stories with him. A different work is Artahe: The Legacy of Jules de Grandin by Phillipe Ward (from Black Coat Press) which is an adventure of the grandson of Jules de Grandin.
An interesting work to check out is The Hauntings of Harrisonville. A Companion to the Works of Seabury Quinn by Chris Worthington. It’s the first of a planned series of 4 volumes on the works of Quinn, this one focused on de Grandin. We get a complete overview of the all the works, as well as people and places in Harrisonville. If there is one issue, it’s that there is no map of Harrisonville included, and I recall one that was included in the Weinberg series.
De Grandin may not be as action oriented as some occult detectives, but I always enjoyed the stories. I thought it was pretty neat that Manly Wade Wellman had his later occult detective John Thunstone call De Grandin on occasion.
I like that Wellman touch, too. I was unaware of it.
Quinn was still alive when “The Phantom Fighter” was in preperation, and he updated the stories in that book. He also wrote the introduction, which I think was reprinted in the Silicon Box editions.