Jules de Grandin, Occult Detective
Men have gone mad with knowing what I know, and madder yet with suspecting what I am beginning to suspect.
When I wrote about E Hoffmann Price’s occult detective, Pierre D’Artois, I mentioned that he had abandoned the character due to the perceived similarities to Seabury Quinn’s own French occult detective, Jules de Grandin, who debuted at Weird Tales around the same time. I hadn’t read anything of Quinn then, but I’ve recently bought a collection of his de Grandin’s stories and finished the first two, The Horror on the Links and The Tenants of Broussac.
THE HORROR ON THE LINKS
Professor Jules de Grandin, doctor and criminologist, is in the US to assist the police department of Harrisonville, New Jersey, when people start being attacked by what they describe as a very big ape. After Dr Trowbridge, the town doctor, examines one of the survivors, de Grandin asks him to assist him in following a less conventional line of inquiry. But what kind of creature could possibly be doing this?
It wasn’t a bad introduction to the characters, but while the story wasn’t too short, it definitely needed more room to breath. Especially as the answer to the mystery wasn’t a conventional one. Despite the overall plot - de Grandin and Trowbridge trying to catch a mysterious creature that has killed one person and wounded others - there wasn’t any suspense or even genuinely scary scenes. In the introduction to this edition (SF Gateway), George A Vanderburgh and Robert E Weinberg write how Quinn gave readers some pretty gruesome descriptions and you can see that here with de Grandin and Trowbridge’s visit to the morgue, but it’s all very clinical without the goriness of a Robert E Howard. De Grandin’s infodumps were clunky and all the connections + how he came about them felt forced. Maybe if he hadn’t waited to explain things to his assistant as genius detectives are wont to do, Quinn could’ve better distributed the sharing of information with his readers. The conclusion was rushed and suffered from the usual problems of a story whose narrator isn’t the one actually solving things - readers get a quick description of the final confrontation after the fact, which isn’t the same as reading it while it’s happening. Ironically, the villain’s Parisian backstory sounded like a much better tale than his American revenge. If E Hoffmann Price’s opening description of Santiago’s worship in The Word of Santiago was what kept me reading his Pierre D’Artois stories, this is what made me read the next de Grandin tale instead of moving on to something else:
Children of the poor were found missing at night. They were nowhere. The gendarmes’ search narrowed to the laboratory of this Beneckendorff, and there they found not the poor missing infants, but a half-score ape-creatures, not wholly human nor completely simian, but partaking horribly of each, with fur and hand-like feet, but with the face of something that had once been of mankind. They were all dead, those poor ones, fortunately for them.
THE TENANTS OF BROUSSAC
De Grandin asks Dr Trowbridge to assist him in trying to find out why several people who had rented the Broussac family’s château keep dying or going mad before the same fate befalls the current tenants. However, when they get there, they realize that something is already happening to the couple’s daughter, Adrienne, and may very well cost her her life if they don’t solve the mystery of the château…
Twice as long as its predecessor, this was a major leap in quality. Yes, de Grandin keeps things for himself, and yes, there’s some revelations about the past in the end, but it didn’t feel clunky or rushed. Also, Quinn let Trowbridge accompany de Grandin for the final confrontation thus allowing readers to ‘see’ it as it unfolded. The old French château was a much better setting than a dull American town, and there was even some suspense about Adrienne’s fate. The reveal of what was being done to her went further than I expected and must’ve provided some pretty good illustrations for Weird Tales - Quinn really knew what he was doing. It’s funny that despite Price’s attempts at spicing things up, especially in the dreadful One Arabian Night, Quinn’s second published de Grandin story managed to be more sexual and in a surprisingly perverse way.
One morning she was found, like the others, crushed to death, and on her face was the look not of agony of dying but the evil smile of an abandoned woman. Even in death she wore it.
That the monster killed a few men too opens some unexpected possibilities (for something published in 1925), though Quinn didn’t go further into that and those attacks could also be seen as it defending its lair from intruders. However, despite the originality and good writing, I’m still not feeling the spookiness. Then again, many of the Weird Fiction stories I’ve read weren’t exactly terrifying.
In The Tenants of Broussac, Quinn provided a list of de Grandin’s many achievements: ‘one of the foremost anatomists and physiologists of his generation, and a shining light in the University of Paris faculty’; ‘had chosen criminology and occult investigation as a recreation from his vocational work’; member of the Allied Intelligence Service during WW1; travels around the world in special missions for the Ministry of Justice. He can also handle guns and swords. That’s certainly impressive. And then there are his colourful exclamations. So far, I got these, though it’s possible I’ve missed something.
Nom d’un petit porc!
Name of a little blue man!
Par la barbe d’un bouc vert!
Morbleu!
Nom d’un bouc!
Name of a little green man!
Nom d’un coq!
De Grandin can also dispense snark, which was much appreciated. Vanderburgh and Weinberg compare him to Hercule Poirot and with his attention to small details, annoyed dismissal of his slower witted partner, and French exclamations, he certainly has things in common with Christie’s creation. A team-up would’ve been fun, especially seeing Hastings and Trowbridge share their experiences as the less clever friend of the genius detective.
JULES DE GRANDIN VS PIERRE D’ARTOIS
While there are some similarities, the two French occult detectives are not the same. D’Artois has a less effervescent personality, and de Grandin’s list of abilities is a little too long, though so far he hasn’t reached Ascott Keane’s nearly omniscient level of preparedness. They also have different styles and if Price had actually wanted to write for that type of character, I think there was enough room for the two of them. For me, the biggest differences lie not with the two lead characters, but with their creators. Price’s stories had a touch of the Mythos in the way the supernatural was connected to older legends and the dramatic descriptions and dialogues had a bit of a Lovecraftian feel to them; Quinn’s, on the other hand, are clearer, more varied, and likelier to appeal to a wider audience. As much as I liked the bits of lore and ideas Price never bothered to develop, just these first two tales were enough for me to tell that, when it comes to these two series, Quinn was a better writer. The Horror on the Links had issues, but The Tenants of Broussac was better in terms of pacing, sidekick narration, and plot progression than any of Price’s stories. By the way, I’m hoping that Trowbridge’s narration will be closer to that going forward, though unlike with Glenn Farrell, at least there’s no danger of him overshadowing de Grandin. The only thing Price has over Quinn is the setting. According to the Introduction, de Grandin will eventually settle in Harrisonville, which is apparently a hotbed of weirdness. Well, weird it may be, but it’s no match for Price’s haunted Bayonne.
VERDICT
I’m sure these stories will eventually start to look repetitive, but for now they’re fun, and I’ll definitely keep reading.
By Danforth