The Devil's Rosary
The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, Volume Two
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The second of five volumes collecting the stories 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.
Collected for the first time in trade editions, The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, edited by George Vanderburgh, presents all ninety-three published works featuring the supernatural detective. Presented in chronological order over five volumes, this is the definitive collection of an iconic pulp hero.
The second volume, The Devil's Rosary, includes all of the Jules de Grandin stories from "The Black Master" (1929) to "The Wolf of St. Bonnot" (1930), as well as a foreword by Stefan Dziemianowicz.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The second of five planned volumes featuring Quinn's diminutive French occult detective, Jules de Grandin, includes 19 fantastical stories originally published in Weird Tales in 1929 and 1930. The title story tells of a theft in Tibet that leads to deadly retribution in the States. Cat-eyed rakshasas prey on a young woman in "The Devil-People," werewolf-like creatures wreak havoc in "Children of Ubasti," and, in the creepy "The Black Master," de Grandin and his friend Dr. Samuel Trowbridge go on a search for treasure and awaken something evil. In "The House Without a Mirror," de Grandin and Trowbridge visit Ducharme Hall, home to a very odd young woman and her family. Quinn obviously delights in de Grandin's over-the-top personality. His unfettered adventures reflect a sense of discovery that was popular in the interwar period. The only thing marring these stories is the frequently racist description of nonwhite characters and their speech, which are an unfortunate sign of the times that these stories were published in. Connoisseurs of pulp adventure who can look past this, however, will be delighted.
