The Best of the Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes: Jules de Grandin

De Grandin, Jules. Jules De Grandin was created by Seabury Quinn (Carmichael, Professor Forrester, The Vagabond) and appeared in ninety-two short stories and one novel from 1925 to 1951, beginning with “The Horror of the Links” (Weird Tales, Oct. 25, 1925). Jules De Grandin is an eccentric French Occult Detective. He is small, excitable, and much given to oaths, interjections, parbleus, helas, and mon vieuxs. De Grandin is assisted by Detective Sergeant Costello, his usual contact with the force, and by Dr. Samuel Trowbridge, the stories’ narrator and De Grandin’s Watson. De Grandin does not usually need their help, however. He is very intelligent, well-educated, trained, and experienced in fighting and defeating the occult and whatever random monstrous nasty he fights. (De Grandin is also vain, voluble, and a glutton, though those qualities are no help in fighting evil). He uses guns, knives, stakes, silver, iron, hypnosis, his contacts with French Intelligence (he worked for them after World War One, in which he fought), his experiences in Africa and Asia, even full-fledged magical spells—whatever it takes to slaughter the bad guys and see good triumph. And bad guys there are: Mad Scientists, bloodthirsty gorillas, ghosts, werewolves, zombies, ghouls, flying severed hands, vampires, psychic batteries, bloodthirsty druids, mummies—every possible bogey, and some that aren’t, run through the De Grandin stories.