While reading The Best of Jules De Grandin by Seabury Quinn, I kept thinking, “How on earth was this guy more popular than Robert E. Howard or H. P. Lovecraft?”

The stories in The Best are mediocre. Now, when I say mediocre, I mean mediocre. As in middling. Not bad. They do have some entertainment value, but they are not much more than something to keep your mind off your troubles on a Sunday afternoon.

Typically, I prefer to praise the good rather than condemn the bad. I also dislike reviews that are mean spirited or contemptuously dismissive. It takes at least some degree of talent to write even a mediocre story. There are also some interesting aspects of these stories. Unfortunately, there are also plenty of better ways to spend one’s time.

(It is also possible these are not actually best of the Jules De Grandin stories. Maybe the editors missed some gems when deciding what to include. I don’t know, as this all I’ve ever read by Quinn.)

Jules De Grandin is a physician but really he is an occult detective. His stories are told by a Dr. Trowbridge, the Watson to De Grandin’s Holmes. (There is certainly an Arthur Conan Doyle influence on these stories, but without Doyle’s natural storytelling ability.) There is also Costello, the stereotypical Irish cop that often helps/heavily relies on De Grandin.

De Grandin is egotistical, fussy, and comfort loving to the point of effeteness. He is also always right and the master of every situation even though those previously mentioned traits do not, in my experience, go with competence. Sherlock Holmes had his ego and quirks but Doyle made him seem human despite that. De Grandin is a flat character. The others are paper thin.

Most of the stories involve De Grandin investigating a nefarious supernatural occurrence, though there are a few stories without a supernatural element. The first story in the book (and I believe the second written), “The Isle of Missing Ships,” involves De Grandin fighting a Bondian super villain. Speaking of James Bond, it has basically the plot of Ian Fleming’s Dr. No. Some of the scenes are very similar including a dining scene and a scene with a giant octopus. To Quinn’s credit this story came out a long time before Fleming’s, but Fleming’s work was more thrilling. Did Fleming read Weird Tales? Or is it just coincidence?

Another story without a “supernatural” element is “Suicide Chapel.” The title comes from the setting of the story’s climax which is a ruined chapel where a cult committed mass suicide. One thinks of Jonestown and other horrible incidents that happened in the real world. It would be a prescient story if it was a major element of the plot. It’s not. It’s just a background element about the setting of the climax, a ruined chapel. Really it would have been just as well if it was any ruined chapel. The plot instead involves a criminal who can communicate with gorillas seeking revenge at a girl’s school. Yes, really.

Most, but not all, of the other stories involve the supernatural. There is more than one vampire story. More than one cult story. More than one mad physician story. With nothing to really distinguish them. Quinn tries to bring an element of pathos to one of the vampires in “Restless Souls,” but it doesn’t really come off.

Overall Quinn lacks the interesting characters of Howard, the atmosphere of Lovecraft, and the style of Smith. So I wonder why his stories were so popular among readers of Weird Tales. I cannot answer that.

Quality is of course hard to quantify. It is even harder to say why something becomes popular. Popularity does not always equal quality, but usually when something is popular something going on there. I just don’t know what it was about these stories.

So was the book worth reading? The answer is maybe. These are some of the earliest stories of the Occult Detective genre. Though I prefer Manly Wade Wellman’s occult detectives they are of interest because of that. If you are a big fan of that genre these stories might be of interest to you.

However all that the stories ever achieve is momentary diversion. Nothing more. Howard had interesting characters like Conan and Solomon Kane and his philosophy of barbarism vs. civilization. Lovecraft created the cosmic horror genre. Conan Doyle’s Holmes has achieved immortality. I really doubt that Quinn’s De Grandin has or will.