Jules de Grandin: The Dead Hand, The House of Horror, The Grinning Mummy
I've already reviewed 2 of Seabury Quinn's stories featuring occult detective Jules de Grandin, and here are 3 more - The Dead Hand, The House of Horror, and The Grinning Mummy. Warning: SPOILERS.
THE DEAD HAND
A woman is dead and several valuable items have been stolen from more than one house. The culprit? A disembodied hand!
"It looked like a hand," he snapped. "A hand with four or five inches of wrist attached to it, and no body. D'ye mean to tell me I saw anything like that?"
The beginning was promising, but Quinn went back to having de Grandin solve everything off-page and then tell everyone what happened. I didn't have a problem with the explanation for how the hand could do that. However, the hypnotism being equally strong in death doesn't explain how the hand could float around. One word: disappointing.
THE HOUSE OF HORROR
Caught in a storm, de Grandin and Trowbridge find shelter in a mysterious house. At first, they're grateful, but soon find out that their host is hiding a very dark secret.
Above the hissing of the rain against the windows and the howl of the sea-wind about the gables, there suddenly rose a scream, wire-edged with inarticulate terror, freighted with utter, transcendental anguish of body and soul.
De Grandin and Trowbridge realizing that they were trapped in the house was good, as was Marston's secret. Cages in the basement are always creepy, and his 'work' was pretty gruesome. I just wished Quinn had let de Grandin and Trowbridge do some detecting and have a proper confrontation with Marston. The ending was too abrupt. Yes, it saved them from having to make a terrible decision, but everything happened too quickly once all had been revealed.
THE GRINNING MUMMY
Professor Butterbaugh is found dead, and the one holding the murder weapon is the Egyptian mummy he's recently acquired...
On the mummy's face, drawn by the embalming process into a sort of sardonic grin, was another reddish smear, as though the dead thing had bent its lips to the wound inflicted by the instrument clutched in its dead hand.
This story didn't deserve the above quote. Instead of some mummy shenanigans, Quinn gave readers human culprits. They may be in a cult, but what would've been impressive in Egypt with all the members together, becomes pretty lame in New Jersey with only a couple of people. The story isn't that short, but it all felt rushed. Once more de Grandin figured everything out too quickly. I know he's a genius, but I'm getting tired of all the info-dumps in the end to explain to Trowbridge (and the readers) how he found out who did it and how he moved to stop them.
VERDICT
Given how many de Grandin stories Quinn wrote, that some might not be that good is to be expected, but I'm beginning to see a pattern here and I'm worried that The Tenants of Broussac might've been the exception rather than the rule.
ABORT! ABORT!
I started reading 3 other Jules de Grandin stories, but ended up stopping before getting to the end. I stopped reading The Isle of Missing Ships when I got to the cannibal natives. Since I'm not just reading this for myself, but also to review it here and on social media, I have to be a little more selective. Also, I had just read Robert E Howard's Black Canaan, so I really wasn't in the mood for more of that. Next, I tried The Great God Pan (not to be confused with Arthur Machen's story of the same name). Quinn made everything so obvious from the start that I felt there was no point in reading it. I skipped to the end to see if it there were any twists, but no, it was exactly as it looked. Finally, I started reading Ancient Fires, and was happy that there were supernatural elements. However, 2 things happened: it became clear it was going to be a case of reincarnation bringing the star-crossed lovers from the past back together; Jules de Grandin's random racism when talking about Indians after the equally random evil gypsy. Yes, I read Lovecraft and Howard's often equally racist stories, but so far there's nothing about Quinn's work to make it worth it.
By Danforth