Today the names of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith, all regular contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales during the first half of the twentieth century, are recognizable even to casual readers of the bizarre and fantastic. And yet despite being more popular than them all during the golden era of genre pulp fiction, there is another author whose name … whose name and work have fallen into obscurity: Seabury Quinn.
Quinn’s short stories were featured in well more than half of Weird Tales’s original publication run. His most famous character, the supernatural French detective Dr. Jules de Grandin, investigated cases involving monsters, devil worshippers, serial killers, and spirits from beyond the grave, often set in the small town of Harrisonville, New Jersey. In de Grandin there are familiar shades of both Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, and alongside his assistant, Dr. Samuel Trowbridge, de Grandin’s knack for solving mysteries–and his outbursts of peculiar French-isms (grand Dieu!)–captivated readers for nearly three decades.
Collected for the first time in trade editions, The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, edited by George Vanderburgh, presents all ninety-three published works featuring the supernatural detective. Presented in chronological order over five volumes, this is the definitive collection of an iconic pulp hero.
The first volume, The Horror on the Links, includes all of the Jules de Grandin stories from “The Horror on the Links” (1925) to “The Chapel of Mystic Horror” (1928), as well as an introduction by George Vanderburgh and Robert Weinberg.
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I was prepared to buy the theory that Seabury Quinn was arbitrarily passed over by later literary critics in favor of Lovecraft. I was looking forward to meeting and liking a new detective. But after one story, I don’t actually think history’s judgment was arbitrary at all. Lovecraft was an original and the father of a genre. This guy is hackneyed, I’ve no other word for it. Even understanding that he was writing a long time ago for an audience with a very different understanding of the world than we have now, it might have been better if they hadn’t lead off the collection with a killer gorilla story…. jus’ sayin’. Far too many places where coincidence was strained past the breaking point. Far too many cliche’ situations. I didn’t get past the first story.
Remind me of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. Great read
A quirky precursor to Hercule Poirot
These are reprints of tales from the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, such as Weird Tales. The tales in this volume are all from the late 1920s. Jules de Grandin, the Holmes of the stories, is almost a clone of Poirot. Unfortunately, the Watson is a rather thick and unimaginative American doctor, which makes for some stolid reading sometimes. Overall, these are enjoyable horror tales; and if you are a fan of the pulps, reading Seabury Quinn is a must to get the flavor of the scary magazines of the period. There are four more volumes in the Compete SQ tales of Jules de Grandin.
reviewed on amazon.com
(This is a review of the audio version)
Bone chilling tales await you in Seabury Quinn’s “Horror on the links, volume 1”, pulp fiction at its best! This is the first of a five volume audio collection of Quinn’s in chronological order from between 1925 -1951. These ghoulish stories of his famous supernatural French Detective Jules de Grandin are sure to please scary story lovers!
A contemporary of Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith, Quinn’s stories of Detective Grandin brought together the scary and morose with ‘amour’…Oh yes he did go there!
This audio is performed by the talented Paul Woods. His amazing ability to inflect emotion into his telling of these creepy happenings captures the listeners attention happily and spookily for hours, days!
This spectacular audio collection is not for the week kneed nor the kiddos. If you’re brave enough to delve into this delectable, prefect for Halloween reading, you won’t be disappointing yourself! It has a great introduction too!
I should point out that I first encountered this author’s writing in one of the very earliest issues of “Pan’s Book of Horror Stories” in England, an unexpected gift from my father who’d picked it up as light reading at the airport in Calcutta in the early 1960’s. The stories are certainly different, even weighed against modern authors such as Barker or King, and that may be what makes them enjoyable…at least from my perspective. Make sure you keep at least one of the lights on.
I started it but lost interest.
very readable and enjoyable, harkening back to a different time of fiction. Very Sherlocky!
The first volume of a series collecting all 92 of Seabury Quinn’s stories of the pulps’ Sherlock Holmes of the supernatural, Dr. Jules de Brandin, assisted by his New Jersey host and sidekick, Dr. Trowbridge. De Brandon crosses his Gallic sword with the deadly ghosts of Knights Templar, Egyptian curses, witches, and evil sorcerors, often with a scantily-clad damsel in distress on hand. Been a fan of de Brandin for decades. Looking forward to reading the complete Quinn canon.