THE HORROR CHAMBERS OF JULES DE GRANDIN by Seabury Quinn

Finally, the last volume of Popular Library's reprint series! And just in time as the complete ebook reprints are now available....making these books pretty much obsolete. I spent years and tons of money hunting these down, and now...well, at least I enjoyed the chase, I guess.

Seabury Quinn apparently was a bit of a progressive in some ways, as you may have seen from my previous reviews of his works. He's sympathetic to minorities (sometimes) and some of his stories have centered on sexuality. And that continues here...

"The Gods of East and West" concerns a woman under the influence of an idol of Kali, and de Grandin, not able to help her out himself....so he brings in a Native American shaman to exorcise the spirit. The story leaves one with an odd feeling; Quinn may have been trying to be pro-Indian but at the same time it comes across as a sort of fetishization of the Noble Savage sort of thing. A strange story.

"The Poltergeist" has another young woman be the center of poltergeist activity. It turns out to be the work of a ghost, namely that of another woman who was plainly a lesbian and in love with the living woman, and who is now jealous of her upcoming marriage. OK, kinda homophobic, to be sure, but that's pretty much to be expected from a story written in 1927.

The story after that, "The House of Golden Masks," is a non-supernatural tale of white slavery. But after that is an eyebrow-raiser, "The Jest of Warburg Tantavul." A young couple are being tormented by the vengeful ghost of the husband's guardian, an eerie phantom whose malice is palpable and who is handled memorably...and even dispatched in a rather modern way. But the thrust of the story, that the man in life had sought revenge on someone else through the couple, is made clear when the reader realizes (and is finally revealed) that the couple are unknowingly brother and sister. And at the end, de Grandin remains silent, seeing that they are happy together. A weird way of ending a tale, and definitely not something that would work today, but oddly compassionate.

"Stealthy Death" is another non-supernatural tale, but with a weird element. A series of people are murdered, and a strangely beautiful but robotic woman keeps cropping up. Who is responsible and why? It turns out the murderer is a Hindu man avenging his sister, who was seduced, robbed, and sold into prostitution by an American missionary. The man's deeds are heinous but it's clear that he has a legitimate gripe.

The final story, "A Gamble in Souls," is a weird sort of tale in which the soul of a man being unjustly executed is put into the body of his evil twin brother. Again, we have some exoticism here as a Middle Eastern "philosopher" is brought in to effect the changeover. It's progressive in a tiny way, but also dripping with pulp-fiction nonsense.

So...are these good? Well, they're fun, to be honest. I'm probably being a little unfair as my modern eyes and modern sensibilities aren't the target audience. It's important to remember the times in which something was written, and the audience it was intended for, when reading older works. We don't live in an eternal present. And while the exaggerated exoticism that goes on in these tales may seem cheap and offensive to many readers today, at the time this was exciting and novel to many American readers. And also, Quinn introduces elements that rouse the reader's sympathy, in taking a brief look into the evils of imperialism in "Stealthy Death" or introducing powerful minority sorcerers in "The Gods of East and West" and "A Gamble in Souls." Even the homicidal lesbian spirit in "The Poltergeist" would at least introduce the concept to people who might not have even been aware such people existed. (And let's be honest...we're in an age now where we can acknowledge that LGBTQ people are just as capable of being dark and twisted as anyone else...) So, really, the fun is in the chills, and there are chills to be had, especially in "The Jest of Warburg Tantavul" which is one of the more dark and twisted pulp tales outside of the exploitative "weird menace" genre. This is pulpy fun and recommended if you can get into the mindset.

THE HELLFIRE FILES OF JULES DE GRANDIN by Seabury Quinn

The fifth in Popular Library's 1970's reprinting of selected de Grandin stories, this is the usual assortment of tales featuring the dashing French phantom-fighter.

There's not much of a running theme here as there was in the last volume, but it's still fun pulp nonsense. Interestingly, two tales in this volume, "The Great God Pan" and "Mephistopheles and Company, Ltd.," are mundane mysteries with the trappings of the supernatural. "Pan" has de Grandin coming across a Greek revival cult with a criminal at its head, and "Mephistopheles" has him assisting a woman being victimized by fake psychics.

Of the supernatural tales, there's "The Devil-People," about a Malaysian woman being pursued by the Rakshasas of Indian folklore. It's an OK story but there's some mild racism and religious chauvinism that taint the enjoyment somewhat...but you have to accept that as part of the pulp canon, the nature of the beast.

"Restless Souls" is a vampire story, but better than Quinn's previous assays at the creature. In this one, a young, newly-made vampire is under the control of an older vampire, and must do their bidding, including luring a lonely man to his destruction. It's a good plot, if a bit overly romantic and dramatic (but hell, it's pulp) and holds together well.

"The Wolf of Saint Bonnot" is a bit of a problem. There's a seance at a weekend house-party, and of course something hideous is raised that victimizes one of the participants. However, it comes out of nowhere...there's no connection and no reason given for why the seance raised that particular spirit. It just does, randomly. I wasn't quite down with that...I do like a tidy logic to things like this, rather than someone being tormented by a spirit from another time and place simply at random. It's not good storytelling, if you ask me.

"The Hand of Glory" is probably the best of the lot, a tale of supernatural rivalry as an archaeologist is planning to raise an ancient goddess, but must also combat a rival who wants the relics for himself. It's enjoyable fluff, with some darkness as it becomes clear one of the main characters is more than happy to sacrifice a loved one to achieve his aims.

All in all, not bad, and I always enjoy de Grandin. And wouldn't you know it...just as I finished this, I found out that now all of Quinn's de Grandin stories, the entire canon, are to be reprinted, with the first volume out now. Dangit! More money to be spent!

THE SKELETON CLOSET OF JULES DE GRANDIN by Seabury Quinn

The next in the Jules de Grandin series, and the cover is amusing as it's classified as "science fiction" and the picture has a monster in a spacesuit...and of course, there's no space aliens in it.

This is more fun from Grandin, and this was actually the first Grandin volume I ever picked up, I bought it on a family vacation as a teen and devoured it, and went bonkers trying to find the rest. As an adult, I finally finished the set with the help of Ebay.

This is more mature Quinn, and the themes could be quite more mature as well. I was surprised reading this as a teen, and even in comparison with the other books, it's a bit eyebrow-raising. There are some blatant sexual horrors here, a bit unusual for this genre. Something so sexual was usually reserved for the Spicy pulps (which dealt with a lot of suggestion, and girls running around naked) and the weird-menace subgenre (which featured sadomasochistic themes and male characters being drugged, hypnotized, or otherwise coerced into bizarre and violent BDSM situations).

So, to go down the stories...

"The Drums of Damballah" is a tale of a voodoo cult practicing in the midst of their small New Jersey town. It's pretty straightforward; they find out a local girl is part of a cult, she gets killed, then a baby is kidnapped, and they follow clues to the cult's ceremony. It's all pretty mundane, with no supernatural content. There is a nice bit at the end when Grandin compassionately allows a woman to grieve her dead son, even though they were both parts of the cult, as he feels a mother's grief is universal and should be honored.

"The Doom of the House of Phipps" involves a family curse, in which the men of an old New England family die with blood on their lips when their first born is delivered, and no Phipps man ever beholds his firstborn child. The source of the curse is a French Catholic girl whom a Phipps ancestor took as a bond-maid, and on whom the ancestor, a stern Puritan, fathered a child. Really, the cause of the curse is good old-fashioned Puritan hypocrisy! Thankfully, the last Phipps man finds a woman who is able to dismiss the curse. (This will occur later in the book...a man is saved from a dire supernatural fate by the courage of a woman who loves him.)

"Dust of Egypt" is intriguing. A brother and sister move into the house of a departed uncle, who was a collector of Egyptian antiquities. A series of strange manifestations occur, and the brother is in bad shape...and while it's not a revived mummy, it's just as bad. In this case, the real root of the problem is the late uncle's thought patterns and belief in the curses of the old tombs...which, really, can be a valid source of concern. Half the time, it's the demons of our minds that are the biggest menace.

"The Brain-Thief" really reflects small-town morality of the day. A man abandons his wife, and a woman abandons her husband, to marry. After a year of facing small-town scorn, suddenly the man returns to his ex-wife's house as if he's coming home from work, and seems to have forgotten the past year. He's horrified to find a new woman in his bed and a baby he doesn't recognize. The wife is hurt and confused, and then seems to "come to" and seek her former husband. The menace? A Hindu victim of racism, who's using his psychic mind-control gifts to disrupt the lives of wealthy Westerners. Again, a sexual note, the revelation that one has been forced and manipulated into infidelity.

"The Bride of Dewer" is the pinnacle of the sexual horrors here. A newlywed couple's honeymoon is disrupted by a strange, supernatural visitor, and husband reveals that his family's men are always told they can't marry. The menace here is Quinn's best, a pagan demon demanding droit du seigneur with any woman the men of the house marry. It's a harrowing concept, that simply marrying someone opens you up to rape by a supernatural monster...but finally, with some help, the wife's courage saves the day.

"Daughter of the Moonlight" is a lesser tale, and a bit disjointed, almost as if it were two tales merged into one. A young woman of Harrisonville society brings disaster to all around her, and she seems to be a witch of some sort, a born witch. It winds up with a scene reminiscent of Byron's fragment of a vampire tale; Quinn seems to have been very well-read.

It's a fun collection, and the sexual horrors contained within will give you a very different perspective on pulp fiction horrors. Like all the de Grandin stories, this is highly recommended.

THE DEVIL'S BRIDE by Seabury Quinn

Another adventure for occult detective Jules de Grandin!

"The Devil's Bride" is the only full-length novel to feature de Grandin, and is surprising in that it contains almost no supernatural content. Instead, de Grandin fights an evil cult with aims more political and earthly than otherworldly.

Pretty young Alice Hume is celebrating her upcoming marriage, but her happiness is only slightly marred by strange messages coming from a ouija board she and friends are toying with, giving messages saying "ALICE COME HOME." Madcap Alice also plans to marry while wearing a strange family heirloom, "the luck of the Humes," a strange jeweled girdle that was worn by Hume women for generations to marry. Alice shows off the girdle to her friends (including de Grandin and his Watson, Dr. Trowbridge), and recounts a story of an odd man who tried to buy it a few days before. And before the first chapter is over, Alice is kidnapped.

De Grandin reveals that he's seen girdles similar to that before; they're made of human skin and used by "Yezidee" cultists when choosing a woman for human sacrifice. And the strange cultists seem to use an arcane powder that causes paralysis and memory loss to cover their tracks.

And we're off on an adventure with de Grandin and Trowbridge battling cultists, infiltrating ceremonies, rescuing Alice, losing her again, and finally a climax in the jungles of Africa.

It's good, rip-roaring read, but the racial politics and views are sometimes appalling. Quinn depicts his "Yezidees" as a group of evil Satanists, but the real-life Yazidi people are a religious/ethic group related to the Kurds, with unique religious beliefs derived from Zoroastrianism and ancient Mesopotamian mythology, who are monotheistic but honor a "peacock angel" named Melek Taus who can be a bit ambivalent and ambiguous, and this has led to other groups, like Muslim fundamentalists and obtuse modern Christians, to assume the Yazidis are devil worshipers. Yazidis are quickly fleeing their homes in the Middle East and Central Asia for more tolerant refuges in the West; they are targets of present-day menaces like ISIL.

De Grandin also reveals that many of these Satanic schemers are being financed by Russia; obviously, since the commies are atheists, they want to undermine religion worldwide, and de Grandin cannily wonders if Christianity's more extreme elements are also being manipulated by the Reds....which would actually make sense, similar to those who suspect Donald Trump is really a liberal ringer trying to make Republicans look bad and guarantee a Democratic president.

De Grandin (and implicitly Quinn) do seem to equate battling Satanism with defending the American way, which reminds me of a book I read long ago, "Slayer of Souls" by Robert W. Chambers, which featured Secret Service agents who were more concerned with defending Christianity than they were with protecting the United States....or considered them equivalent. An early example of American exceptionalism?

One element of the story was a bit touching, of a woman who works for the cult, but eventually flees them after refusing to participate in an infant sacrifice. She is bumped off by the cult, but her history is later revealed by her brother, a tale of abuse and rejection by an intolerant religious maniac parent driving her to the arms of the Satanic cult. It's a nice bit of balance, with Quinn (through de Grandin) pointing out the destructiveness of Christian fundamentalism.

But, all in all, "The Devil's Bride" is a decent pulp read, despite some troubling political stances and sad ethnic ignorance...which was unfortunately common back in the days it was written. It's got overtones of Sax Rohmer here and there (Fu Manchu's cult honored a white peacock), but also with some unique Quinn flair. If you can find it, it's entertaining, but steel yourself for some outdated viewpoints.

THE CASEBOOK OF JULES DE GRANDIN, by Seabury Quinn

The second de Grandin collection does show some development of Quinn as a writer....some, but not much. He was a pulp writer who had occasional flashes of grace, but at least was never dull, a huge crime in the pulp market. And this book is certainly enjoyable, if not of any real literary stature.

Interestingly, Harrisonville, NJ (the center of de Grandin's universe) doesn't quite serve as a Hellmouth, spewing forth supernatural evil, but it does seem to attract it, as most of the menace here is transplanted. In "Children of Ubasti," a pair of strange immigrants come to Harrisonville, who turn out to be man-eating inhuman creatures, some sort of felinoid creature passing for human, who may have been the inspiration for the ghuls of Middle Eastern lore. It does end with an eyebrow-raising rant from de Grandin about how America is too tolerant of immigrants, which is a bit odd coming from a character who is an immigrant.

"The House of Horror" is a fairly grisly tale of how de Grandin and Dr. Trowbridge stumble on a mansion inhabited by a mad surgeon who enjoys operating on...and mutilating...beautiful women. It has the two facing an interesting ethical conflict, but all is resolved by a too-convenient deus ex machina ending.

"The Silver Countess" has de Grandin squaring off against a vampire who inhabits a medieval statue brought to the country by a collector. "The Corpse-Master" is unsurprisingly a tale of a man using voodoo to raise zombies, in this case to get vengeance on those who slighted him. (Some of these villains seek vengeance for very petty reasons...)

"Ancient Fires" is a rather nice little story that starts off as a haunted house tale, but ends up being a a love story with its origins in a Victorian romance that crossed racial boundaries; despite a pat ending that makes things acceptable to the American reader of the time, it does have a surprisingly progressive view of ethic relations.

"The Serpent Woman" is the least story of the collection, in which a seeming case of a baby kidnapped by a monster has a rather dull, mundane solution. But the last, "The Chapel of Mystic Horror," is the best. A well-off family buys a mansion that was imported stone-for-stone from Cyprus, after the people who brought it over died mysteriously. A house party is stricken with strange events, including an artist who finds herself painting scenes she's not intending to paint. A joking seance leads to even more menace, and an ancient evil that comes from the very stones themselves turns out to be at fault. It's a story with some nifty macabre touches and a reasonable solution.

All told, it's like other Quinn works. It's pulp nonsense, but it's fun pulp nonsense that's still readable today. If you can, seek it out.

TERROR TALES by Arthur J. Burks

I recently became aware of the Radio Archives site which carries an impressive array of ebook versions of classic pulp novels, as well as collections of tales from the shudder pulps. This was my first purchase from them and I'm glad I bit.

Terror Tales is the first in a series of collections of pulp horror tales, each a sampling of the work of a single author. And I appreciate how they kick off with a frank word about how these stories are products of their time and can contain examples of racial and ethnic stereotyping typical of the period. In other words, these can be very un-PC and unenlightened, so those inclined to clutch their pearls and judge everything by modern standards had best stay away.

Some of these are more direct horror, and some dance on the edge of weird-menace territory, an odd subset of horror pulp writing that often featured sadistic violence, sexualized situations, and heroes being coerced or convinced into doing horrendous deeds. I've read some full-on examples of that genre...and ew, they can be intense and distasteful. These don't go all the way into that but stay on the borderlands. And interestingly, some stories have mundane menaces, and some are full-on supernatural, and a couple at the end have an odd, almost mystical slant.

"Six Doors to Horror" is a loony, surreal, throw-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-at-the-reader story about a group of people dining in the home of an aristocratic Chinese man in New York, only running afoul of supernatural forces lurking in a sub-basement crypt. (Naturally, every home in Chinatown has a crypt holding supernatural forces...didn't you know that? One of these days I'll do an essay about Chinatown mysteries...) "Eater of Souls" is set in the Dominican Republic, with a jungle doctor running afoul of a local curse, and his lovely wife falling victim to a plague, and corpse-candles dancing 'round in her bedroom...or are they? Although it seems supernatural, all has a material cause.

An artist and his favorite model (who has the clumsy name of "Darda") go out to eat at an out-of-the-way restaurant in New York, and end up having to battle the "Keepers of the Black Tavern." This story is just violence and sadism in a gothic atmosphere, with a cult that celebrates torture. "Blossoms of Doom" gives us the story of a young woman living on a Caribbean estate left to her by her artist father, with orders that she always live there. But as the man she loves (clumsily named "Clel"...Burks had a thing for weird, clumsy names) comes to visit, the very plants on the estate seem to be trying to kill her, and eerie menaces are around every corner. Is it her possessive (and possibly incestuous) father's ghost? Or is there something more mundane behind it all?

"When a Corpse Commands!" is set in Pennsylvania Dutch country, on an island in a river, and while overflowing with gothic atmosphere and overheated emotions, is basically a murder mystery with a young woman accused of murder, and then of witchcraft by the superstitious locals. She must unmask the real murderer and get away from there to save her own life.

"No Man Escapes Me!" is an odd story, VERY odd, and originally Burks published it under a pseudonym. It is basically a rather run-of-the-mill noir story of passion and attempted murder...but...it's narrated by Death, who observes the goings on with a smug feeling that even if someone escapes this time, then eventually they'll be caught in his nets. "Through Death's Thin Veil" is more mysticism as Death plays a firm role, but there's also a bit of ghost action as well. An aging doctor tries to save the life of a young woman during a blizzard, only he's conscious of Death waiting for him, and a deceased rival doctor mocking him, and maybe a ghost showing up.

This was a fun read, although to be frank the writing is rather poor in spots, especially in the earlier tales. Burks developed grace and style as he went on; the last two stories are arresting in their mystical slant on the usual pulp nonsense.

The good folks at Radio Archives currently have this on sale for $2.99 (regular price $3.99), and at either price it's reasonable for the chance to immerse yourself in pulp terrors. This is worth checking out.

Once Upon a Halloween, by Richard Laymon

Richard Laymon is someone I just don't know what to make of. Figuring out where he's coming from is difficult; does he take this all seriously, or is his tongue planted firmly in his cheek? It's almost impossible for me to figure out.

In Once Upon a Halloween, we meet Shannon and Laura, two housemates waiting for their dates for a costume party on Halloween night. Trick-or-treaters are coming by, and everything seems as usual...until a teenaged boy runs in, claiming to be hiding from some sort of cult that had snatched his girlfriend as they were necking in a nearby cemetery. The two young women aren't sure if they believe him but then said cultists show up, looking for more victims. So then we kick off a story full of action and violence, and it also throws in a homicidal ghost haunting Shannon and Laura's house!

Laymon isn't for all tastes; some find his penchant for sexual violence to be off-putting, if not totally offensive and vile. I've read a number of his books and there's a rape or some other form of sexual violence in just about all of them. Plus his characters seem to always be thinking about sex, and everything is sexually charged. In this book the cultists are all impressive physical specimens, male and female, and run around naked under their robes. (Oddly, they use their real names, unless their idea of proper occult names includes "Royce" and "Eleanor." And there's no mention of them worshiping anything in particular; toward the end, it even goes so far as to have two surviving members speculate that it's all bunk and an excuse for an orgy.) Characters are constantly checking each other out and wondering about hooking up, even when in dire mortal danger. In this particular book Laymon even has an 11-year-old girl having sexual thoughts, and a teenager checks her out. Yuck.

The homicidal ghost in the house exists primarily as a side plot that is never truly resolved. While it's clear it's never harmed Laura or Shannon, it does make one attempt at murder and does succeed in killing two more people. Why? How do they deal with it? It's all abandoned at the end.

This book IS enjoyable on a certain level if it's taken as a tongue-in-cheek salute to Halloween, a sort of literary B-movie. And I've seen Laymon defended on those grounds, that his books are just B-movies on the page, if not just direct-to-DVD movies. Sometimes they seem homophobic, like a few that have featured villainous and vile gay characters, and oddly often Laymon attempts to establish his characters as fans of Rush Limbaugh, and I can't make out if that's meant to be satirical or a serious endorsement. And sometimes his books seem like macho wish-fulfillment. One of his last novels, Night in the Lonesome October, features a lonely protagonist who's bereft after his girlfriend ditches him, only to have multiple women and men throwing themselves at him. (To be fair, that book also features a gay character who's the real hero of the story, and some genuine atmosphere as the narrator has some surreal encounters while wandering the streets of his college town by night. However, it all ends up in a rather standard and uninteresting serial-killer plot, as if Laymon had set up a fascinating milieu but then had no idea of what to do with it.)

Once Upon a Halloween is an OK read for the Halloween season if you can handle the sexual violence and just feel like something trashy and disposable. If you want to check out further Laymon, I would suggest The Traveling Vampire Show, which some say is probably his best work. Night in the Lonesome October, as previously noted, is atmospheric but badly flawed. Come Out Tonight is very bad, full of stupid characters whose motivations can't be fathomed, and some say it's his worst work. I've read another book of his that I can't remember the title of (I think it may have been Among the Missing but am not sure) that wasn't even horror, it was just a police procedural with a bisexual killer and his sniveling gay lover.

Laymon (1947-2001) was never big in the US; one of his early books had a disastrous editing job and horrible cover art that he was never able to overcome. However, he was popular in the UK and after his death some of his work that never saw print the US was released. His works are thick but not very substantial; you can whip through one of his books in an afternoon. He's not someone I'm going to be reading often, as I've either had bad luck choosing titles to read or else he's just not to my taste. I may try some others but don't hold your breath.