The Best of Jules de Grandin
20 Classic Occult Detective Stories
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- USD 16.99
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- USD 16.99
Descripción editorial
"Hercule Poirot meets Fox Mulder . . . raises genuine shivers. "—Kirkus Reviews
A collection of the 20 greatest tales of Jules de Grandin, the supernatural detective made famous in the classic pulp magazine Weird Tales.
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 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.
The Best of Jules de Grandin, edited by George Vanderburgh, presents twenty of the greatest published works featuring the supernatural detective. Presented in chronological order with stories from the 1920s through the 1940s, this collection contains the most incredible of Jules de Grandin's many awe-inspiring adventures.
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This pulpy collection comprises 20 short supernatural detective tales from the prolific Quinn (1889 1969), all originally published in Weird Tales magazine between 1926 and 1945 and featuring Jules de Grandin, a French "occult detective" who resembles both Holmes and Poirot. Throughout these action-packed but dated adventures, De Grandin and his Watsonian sidekick, Dr. Samuel Trowbridge of Harrisonville, N.J., confront a wide range of monstrous creatures, ancient superstitions, and then little-understood science. "Restless Souls" pits them against vampires, "The Jest of Warburg Tantavel" features visitations from the dead, and "Isle of Missing Ships" sees the pair contend with cannibals, while "The Devil's Rosary" hinges on atomic theory. With unquestioning support from Trowbridge, de Grandin invariably defeats evil monsters and rescues scantily clad beauties, presaging the paranormal romance novels and supernatural soap operas of today. Pulp devotees will take a historical interest in this collection, but formulaic plots and abundant clich s will make it an easy pass for most readers.