Jules de Grandin Review

 
A little while ago, I mentioned Seabury Quinn’s Jules de Grandin stories in a post about formulaic work. By now, I have worked my way through the first collection and started the second one, so I think it’s time for a first review of M. de Grandin. The first collection is titled “Horror on the Links” (after the first story of the volume) and includes all stories appearing in Weird Tales between 1925 and 1928.

I will start off with a little warning. The suggestion from the preface of the book - to read the stories in moderation and not as many as you can in one sitting - is a good one. The stories are, indeed, quite formulaic and by reading too many of them at once, you tire of them. I rushed through the first half of the book in a few sittings, but found I had to take a full break from the stories for a bit and read something else before I could return - this time reading no more than one or two stories a day, making breaks when I felt like it was getting tiring again.

Enjoyed in moderation, however, the stories are very good. Quinn has a solid grip on storytelling and knows how to use his own medical knowledge to make the stories more gruesome and interesting. He uses the ‘Watson-perspective,’ telling the stories not from the point of view of M. de Grandin, but from the point of view of his friend and colleague (both are doctors) Dr. Trowbridge. Quite often, Trowbridge is flummoxed, as Watson is from time to time. There are usually situations in the story where M. de Grandin acts on his own, so Trowbridge and the reader have no idea what he does until he explains it in the end.

M. de Grandin himself is even worse when it comes to confidence than Sherlock Holmes. He has even less modesty than the Great Detective - and, yes, that is actually possible. He is also more of a superman - while Holmes gives the impression of having found his niche early in life and trained his abilities accordingly, M. de Grandin has been doctor, soldier, detective, and many other things, despite not being all that old himself at the time of the stories. He always somehow has or gains the necessary knowledge to deal with the monster of the week (an impression coined much later, but true for the stories here as well). This is one thing which gets tiring after a while, if you read too many stories at once.

Another things which gets tiring after a while is the unfortunate habit of the author to write down accents in actual script. I have covered that problem in a post about writing dialogue already and won’t dive into it again, but I find it much harder to read a text where someone (Trowbridge’s housekeeper and one of the regular policemen are usually guilty of that) ‘speaks’ in a dialect or accent put down in actual writing. However, this wasn’t uncommon at the time at which the stories were written. Quinn also peppers the text with the most absurd French expressions used by M. de Grandin (usually in surprise), but those are funny rather than annoying and not understanding them (I speak a little French, but not all readers did or will) isn’t harming the stories, since they’re not essential to understanding what is going on.

The stories themselves are interesting, going into the macabre more than once, sometimes very closely skirting outright taboos, such as cannibalism and sadism in a high degree. Not all of the monsters which M. de Grandin fights and kills (like Holmes, he sometimes is judge, jury, and executioner all at once) are necessarily supernatural. Some of them are mad scientists or criminals who use the supernatural in their plans. It’s actually a nice idea, because it means the reader can’t be sure if this week’s monster (Jules de Grandin became more and more popular over time and his stories appeared more frequently in Weird Tales as he did) will be human or really supernatural.

Like a lot of pulp authors of his time (the Jules de Grandin series encompasses the time span from the 1920s to the 1940s), Quinn worked with a lot of prejudices still found often at the time and there are indeed ‘lower people’ (like Africans, Indians, or Arabs) in his stories which are basically shown as little more than animals. There are racial slurs and behaviour which authors wouldn’t use these days. There are also content errors which can be excused because Quinn couldn’t know better at his time, since the facts weren’t yet scientifically clear. Because of this, the stories demand a certain understanding and a certain patience. If these were stories written in 1930s pulp style, but by a modern author, I’d rate those things negatively, but in this case, I won’t. I want you to be warned, though, if you decide to read the book.

What is my overall verdict, then? Is “Horror on the Links” a book to read or rather a book to avoid? The fact that I bought the second volume and have started reading it should tip you off a little, of course. Yes, “Horror on the Links” is a good book to read, if you adhere to the warning in the preface and don’t overdo it. Even though Seabury Quinn wrote formulaic, the stories themselves are interesting and well worth a read. The writing is good (apart from the aforementioned problems) and you will be hard-pressed to find authors still (or again) in print who skirted more closely to taboo with more talent for it.

I do have to admit that I picked up a certain preoccupation of the author with feet, women’s feet especially, but who am I to judge another person’s fetish (and the preoccupation takes the direction of surprisingly detailed descriptions of the feet, something which you usually don’t expect or find in regular fiction). Quinn always made sure to have a suitably pretty damsel in danger, which enabled the publisher to put a suitably suggestive scene on the title page. And most of those damsels apparently had very pretty feet. You make something out of that, if you wish to.

“Horror on the Links” is not a cheap e-book (it costs more than quite some regular printed books I’ve bought in my life), but the collection of stories is well worth the price. If you like horror, the supernatural, and a supernatural version of Sherlock Holmes, you should at least check the book.