THE BEST OF JULES DE GRANDIN

Don’t have time to wade through all five volumes collecting the stories of pulpmeister Quinn (1889-1969) published in Weird Tales between 1925 and 1951? Editor George Vanderburgh has obligingly selected 20 standouts.

“Standout” doesn’t mean “best.” Self-described “physician and occultist” Dr. Jules de Grandin is roused from his rarely glimpsed domestic sphere in Harrisonville, New Jersey, by an unending parade of cases that end up involving ghouls, vampires, werewolves, mummies, familiars, reincarnated figures from past history, and the undead. So every one of these stories is very much like all the others. Even many of their titles—“The House of Horror,” “Restless Souls,” “Stealthy Death,” “The Mansion of Unholy Magic,” “Witch-House,” “Suicide Chapel”—are interchangeable. Yet they all stand out from the everyday world in the starkest terms possible. Grandin and his stodgier sidekick, Dr. Samuel Trowbridge, confront bridegrooms who drop dead at the altar, horribly vengeful surgeons, sinister kittens, fathers eager to sacrifice their children in the name of science, and plot twists that echo “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” The Moonstone and “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” (and, to be fair, others that anticipate “The Most Dangerous Game” and Jamaica Inn). National and ethnic stereotypes take the place of characterization, and both the malefactors and their victims are largely indistinguishable from others in their class. Quinn’s zeal is reserved for pulpy plotting. He launches each tale with a juicy hook, breaks as many taboos (from dismemberment to incest) as possible, and keeps the pot boiling en route to the inevitably anticlimactic explanations, face-offs, and post-combat libations.

Blood and thunder along with scantily clad female victims, monsters of every stripe, and more blood.