A Rival from the Grave

The fourth 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 fourth volume, A Rival from the Grave, will include all the stories from “The Chosen of Vishnu” (1933) to “Incense of Abomination” (1938), as well as an introduction by George Vanderburgh and Robert Weinberg and a foreword by Mike Ashley.

Contents:

Introduction — George A. Vanderburgh and Robert E. Weinberg
Keeping the Golden Age Alive — Mike Ashley

1933
The Chosen of Vishnu (Weird Tales, August 1933)
Malay Horror (Weird Tales, September 1933)
The Mansion of Unholy Magic (Weird Tales, October 1933)
Red Gauntlets of Czerni (Weird Tales, December 1933)

1934
The Red Knife of Hassan (Weird Tales, January 1934)
The Jest of Warburg Tantavul (Weird Tales, September 1934)

1935
Hands of the Dead (Weird Tales, January 1935)
The Black Orchid (Weird Tales, August 1935)
The Dead-Alive Mummy (Weird Tales, October 1935)

1936
A Rival from the Grave (Weird Tales, January 1936)
Witch-House (Weird Tales, November 1936)

1937
Children of the Bat (Weird Tales, January 1937)
Satan’s Palimpsest (Weird Tales, September 1937)
Pledged to the Dead (Weird Tales, October 1937)
Living Buddhess (Weird Tales, November 1937)
Flames of Vengeance (Weird Tales, December 1937)

1938
Frozen Beauty (Weird Tales, February 1938)
Incense of Abomination (Weird Tales, March 1938)