HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: The Jules de Grandin Stories - Seabury Quinn

Jules de Grandin may not have been the first occult detective in weird and supernatural fiction but he will always be the original Night Stalker to me.  Around the time that cult TV show Kolchak: The Night Stalker was airing in the 1970s a series of paperback books appeared in my local Woolworth's on the paperback racks I used to regularly pore over. The garishly colorful covers with bizarre creatures and titles like The Horror Chamber of Jules de Grandin and The Hellfire Files of Jules de Grandin were perfect lures for my teenage eyes.  I eagerly bought them all over a period of three or four months that summer.  In them I was introduced to the small but fierce French physician who battled every possible evil creature imaginable and did it all almost entirely in a fictional town in New Jersey.  Of all places - New Jersey!  The only state in the USA that was the butt of jokes of every stand-up comic and episode of Laugh-In during the 1970s.  But from the pen of Seabury Quinn Harrisonville, New Jersey was one of the most terrifying places you would ever want to visit.  A town overrun with vampires, werewolves, reincarnated Egyptian mummies, worshippers of Satan, and myriad evildoers obsessed with immortality and willing to make bargains with any demonic being they could summon and not unwilling to kidnap, steal or murder in the process. Not all the tales took place in New Jersey, but the bulk of the stories that appeared in Weird Tales from 1925 through 1951 did.  I devoured these stories in the six paperback volumes thinking that that was all I could get my hands on.  Now all 92 Jules de Grandin supernatural stories as well as the single novel featuring the occult detective, The Devil's Bride, are available to devotees of pulpy horror in a five volume set. Each volume runs close to 500 pages and there are dozens of tales I'd never heard of or read before.

As George Vanderburgh, owner of the indie press Battered Silicon Dispatch and a Sherlockian of some note, and Robert Weinberg, that renowned collector of mystery and supernatural books and Weird Tales maven extraordinaire, remind us in the detail rich introduction to each volume Seabury Quinn is not the most famous of Weird Tales writers.  But Jules de Grandin, his engaging intelligent and extremely knowledgeable occult detective, was definitely one of the most popular characters among the readers of the magazine. From de Grandin's first appearance in "The Horror on the Links" in 1925 the Frenchman known for his frequent bizarre exclamations like "Barbe d'un chameau!" or "Larmes d'un poisson!" was an instant hit.  Readers demanded more stories from Quinn and the publisher. Every year de Grandin tales made the "best of " lists and were frequently reprinted in later issues.  It's not hard to see why for Jules and his physician sidekick Dr. Samuel Trowbridge are truly likeable and heroic in the manner that the best of pulp fiction characters always are.

Short in stature, athletic in build, blond, bearded, a speaker of several languages de Grandin is like a mix of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and John Silence, all characters he must have been modeled on.  Well, perhaps not so much Poirot for he was only five years old when the first of the de Grandin adventures was published.  But surely Holmes, Silence and perhaps Carnacki, William Hope Hodgson's other well known occult detective might have been Quinn's source as Weinberg and Vanderburgh tell us in their introduction. Letters pored in from readers analyzing the stories, praising and critiquing Quinn's imagination. A cult grew around the character.  As the two men describe the popularity and the phenomenon of de Grandin he began to take on a life and legend similar to Holmes. They write in their intro: "Readers smitten by how believable de Grandin seemed as a character wrote to Weird Tales asked if he was a person in real life."

There is not enough room here to describe all of the stories and I have no way near finished even the first two volumes. At random I selected stories that I haven't read based merely on length (avoiding those over 25 pages in order to read as many as I could in two weeks) and also I was lured by those with odd titles. Vanderburgh and Weinberg's intro also whetted my appetite by pointing out the more grisly and horrific of the stories.  I was drawn mostly to Quinn's fascination with Eastern mythology and religions and his penchant for pitting de Grandin against creatures less well known in the lore of the supernatural. Here is a modest sampling of the strange and fantastic adventures of the French physician turned occult detective. Each tale's first appearance in is in parentheses.

"The Horror on the Links" - The life of the idle rich at a golf country club is no party when an ape-like creature kills a woman and pursues another. Shades of Poe's Rue Morgue and Well's Dr. Moreau meld in a story of revenge and diabolical experiments. (Oct 1925)

"The Isle of Missing Ships" - More of a pirate adventure than an occult detective story it foreshadows Indiana Jones' derring do. Jules Verne set pieces also crop up in this story of a self-proclaimed god who calls himself Goonong Besar and rules an island in the South Pacific populated with the usual cannibalistic inhabitants armed with poison arrows. Seemingly filled with silent movie clichés from its maze-like underground fortress to the scenes of captives tied to stakes being cooked for dinner. Tiresome, not thrilling nor original in the least. My least favorite story of those I selected. (Feb 1926)

"Ancient Fires" - Haunted house, ghost of an Indian princess and reincarnation. Nicely done, but very familiar to anyone who has read a lot of these types of tales. Margery Lawrence handles reincarnation and lost love in her Miles Pennoyer stories better than Quinn. (Sept 1926)

"The Grinning Mummy" - What's an occult detective series without a smattering of Egyptology and a vengeful mummy? Incomplete, that's what. Here's the requisite angry mummified corpse on the rampage.  De Grandin is in fine form acting as a true detective in this outing. It's genuinely thrilling. Jules' habit of bizarre French exclamations adds "Nom d'un porc!" and "Dieu et le diable!" to his ever growing list. (Dec 1926)

"The Gods of East and West" - Jules enlists the help of a medicine man of the Dakotahs to help save Idoline Chetwynde (love that name!) from the grip of a spell cast by the malevolent goddess Kali. Only one bizarre French expression ("Nom d'une anguille!") but the action filled tale, the spells and rites and originality more than make up for the lack of odd vocabulary. A good one! (Jan 1928)

"The Serpent Woman"  - Jules and Dr. Trowbridge prevent a woman 's suicide then hear her story of being accused of her child's murder.  She claims he was not killed but stolen in the night. However, there is no sign of anyone having entered her home.  An impossible kidnapping!  This is one of the rare genuine detective stories in the de Grandin canon. The title of course reveals the culprit, but the discovery of who she is, how and why she accomplishes her misdeeds makes for gripping and entertaining reading. It even makes use of a genuinely surprising reveal. Added bonus: Quinn incorporates the Jersey Devil legend, probably its earliest fictional appearance. (June 1928)

"The Devil's Rosary" - A curse has befallen the Arkwright family. Nearly every one of them has died a violent death and at the site of each death a small red bead is found.  Haroldine Arkwright has found a red bead in her purse and is terrified she will be the next to die. Jules and Dr Trowbridge investigate and uncover another supernaturally enforced vendetta this time at the hands of victimized Tibetan monks. One of the more original stories making use of Quinn's fascination with Eastern religion and mysticism. (Apr 1929)

The five volumes that make up The Complete Tales of Jules De Grandin are published by Night Shade Books.  Each hefty tome is available through the usual bookselling websites in both new and used copies.  The most recent volume, Black Moon (vol 5), was released in March 2019. I still have three more volumes to acquire and with all the other books I have in my mountainous TBR piles I may never finish reading the entire collection.

Seabury Quin wrote pulp fiction in its purest form. It's text book pulp, a quintessential example of early 20th century American popular storytelling and genre fiction. As such these are far from great literature but that doesn't make them any less entertaining. You need to enter the world of Jules de Grandin prepared for not only over-the-top action and melodrama, but xenophobic comments and a generous supply of ultra un-PC descriptions of "foreigners".  But I am never one to be repelled by these sins of the past.  Horror stories and movies from every era are replete with similar embarrassing and shameful depictions. It's the imaginative storytelling that will get me all the time. And I'm a sucker for learning new mythology, superstition and ancient rites. The de Grandin stories are chock full of that too and to me that's what makes them worth reading.

FFB: A Beastly Business - John Blackburn

THE STORY: Bill Easter, conman and rogue for hire, will do nearly anything for the right price. He’s recovered stolen goods, he’s located missing persons, he’s even committed murder. Now he’s been hired to dispose of a dead body in the ground floor apartment of a landlord who can’t bring himself to enter the place. The body turns out to be Henry Oliver, a enormously overweight and hirsute recluse who is suspected of having been a mass murderer known as the "Mad Vicar". After successfully disposing of the body employing unorthodox and slightly illegal methods Easter also uncovers some puzzling documents that hint at the existence of a valuable jewel encrusted relic that Oliver brought back from his travels in the Nueva Leone, South America. Easter’s detective work leads him to eccentric adventure J. Molden Mott, also looking for the jeweled relic. Easter along with his sidekick and sometime lover Peggy Tey find themselves in Scotland and knee deep in a macabre adventure that involves Russian spies, a mutating fungus, a mad scientist, the legend of a South American conquistador, and werewolf mythology that all adds up to A Beastly Business (1982).

THE CHARACTERS: Bill Easter is John Blackburn’s lesser known series characters. He, along with Peggy Tey, appeared in four books prior to their last appearance in A Beastly Business. This is also the only crossover novel to feature both Easter and General Charles Kirk, Blackburn’s primary series character whose work with foreign intelligence has often led him into the world of paranormal activity. The Easter books differ greatly from Blackburn’s other occult and supernatural thrillers because they have a very black humor. Easter is a vulgar, opinionated, often foul mouthed rogue who is out only for himself. Peggy is no better. They are often secretly double crossing one another when money, jewels or valuable treasure are involved.

Easter is hired by Allen Smeaton a pseudo-posh banker who thinks very highly of himself. Yet he and his corrupt wife Cynthia are all too easily tempted by the chance to get rich quick. Easter does all the work while they drool greedily in the background demanding he risk his life and what little reputation he has left to recover the treasure and split it four ways. Clever readers know that split is never going to be four equal shares. Someone is bound to be left out if not eliminated altogether.

INNOVATIONS: As with most of Blackburn's thrillers we get an abundance of weirdness, macabre deaths, strange legends and his usual trademark touch of an insidious organism, in this case a botanical fungus, as the cause for much of the mayhem. He always found new ways to invigorate old horror motifs.  The werewolves in this novel are like no others you have read about or seen in the movies.

This is much funnier than any of Blackburn's other books I've read, but you do have to be sort of a sicko to enjoy his vulgar jokes and black humor at the expense of other characters. I unapologetically admit to being one of those sickos. Revenge is served piping hot and supersweet in A Beastly Business and I very much enjoy seeing the wicked suffer punishments in Grand Guignol fashion.  Theatre of Blood, one of my favorite satiric horror movies, kept coming to mind as I pored over this entertainingly perverse book. Those familiar with that Vincent Price cult classic will have an idea of what kind of beastly business Blackburn gets up to.

QUOTES: "Owing to your wanton stupidity [Allen] I had to live over a monster. To nurture a viper in my bosom."
An unjust and inaccurate cliche. Even the smallest of vipers couldn't have found shelter between Cynthia Smeaton's skinny breasts, and I wouldn't have blamed her husband if he'd lost his temper and clouted her.

"Peg go could go to bed with [the reverend] if she wanted, though it was unlikely he'd fancy her. But during the last two hours I'd had a dead lamb lobbed at me. I'd been threatened by a twelve-bore shotgun and nearly killed by the bailiff's motor bicycle [...] and earned the displeasure of Sgt. Gillespie. I'd achieved quite a lot and what had Peggy done? Mrs. Tey had confided in an oily non-conformist minister and spilled the beans."

THINGS I LEARNED: One thing I must have known as a kid, but clearly had forgotten. The real name of a well known figure from the Russian Revolution turns up over the course of the book. If you're hip to this facet of world history and know it well, then you won't be taken in by a ruse of General Kirk's. Bill was. I was. And most readers will be. Sadly, part of this ruse is spoiled by the blurb on the rear cover of the new reprint edition. Do yourself a favor and don't read that before you read the book.

EASY TO FIND? Those savvy devils at Valancourt Books have done fans of 60s & 70s horror a great service in reprinting John Blackburn's books. A Beastly Business is yet another in their ever growing library of forgotten classics being revived for new generations of lovers of the macabre, be they the lugubrious and melancholy horror of 18th century Gothics or 20th century monsters on the rampage. I don't often see used copies of the original UK edition of A Beastly Business for sale as it's one of his scarcest titles.  If a copy should turn up expect to see it outrageously priced. Best to stick with the $17 paperback from our good friends at Valancourt. This new reprint is also the first and only US edition.

FFB: The Bloody Moonlight - Fredric Brown

THE STORY: Ex-carny worker Ed Hunter and his Uncle Am are situated in Chicago working for the Ben Starlock Agency as private detectives in their third adventure, The Bloody Moonlight (1948). The case involves an inventor who has created an interstellar radio receiver, a potential female investor who wants to know if the inventor’s claims that he has communicated with Mars are true, and some gruesome murders that may be the work of a werewolf. Now how can you not want to know more?

CHARACTERS: In previous books Ed and Uncle Am were confined to their previous life, so to speak, in the world of travelling carnivals with their sideshows and amusement attractions and the con artists and murderers hiding among the tents and Midway. Having proven themselves as amateur sleuths they now turn professionals and are taking on seemingly routine work until this decidedly bizarre case involving extraterrestrial communication and lycanthropy. Ed is sent from the Chicago offices to travel south to the central Illinois town of Tremont where he meets up with a variety of intriguing characters.

Among them are Stephen Amory, the eccentric inventor who has a secret about his new radio system more eyebrow raising than the rumors that he’s listening in on Martians. There is also Justine Haberman, who as Ed and Uncle Am’s rich client has a smaller role than I anticipated but also raises the sexual innuendo bar several notches high in her scenes with Ed. She is so taken with Ed she loans him the use of her Cadillac which makes him all the more noticeable in Tremont. Sheriff Kingman is one of those rural policeman with a short fuse and little tolerance for city slickers. He doesn’t like Ed much and isn’t afraid to express his dislike violently. And then there’s Mollie Kingman who also sets off Ed’s libido in a dangerous way. She has a secret too that shouldn’t have been such a surprise to me, but darn it if Brown didn’t succeed in fooling me.

Caroline Bemiss, editor of the Tremont Advocate, is unquestionably the most intriguing and lively of the bunch. She is also a former carny worker and when she learns that Ed Hunter (a plain name) is the nephew of the very same Am Hunter she worked with many moons ago they become instant friends. She has a maternal quality that is very likeable and her rapport with Ed enlivens the book each time they have scenes together.

Ed and Caroline spend many hours together sorting through the oddities of the murder of a man whose seems to have been attacked and killed by a wild beast and whose body then disappeared. When Ed is fingered by the irate Sheriff Kingman as Suspect #1 and throws him in jail Caroline bails him out. She then does her best to keep Ed out of jail while also entrusting him to provide her with inside dope on the murder case so she can finally scoop the Chicago newspapers with headline news.

INNOVATIONS: It's easy to see that the story is an innovative blending of science fiction, horror and detective novel plot devices. Brown spent equal time as a crime writer and science fiction writer back in his days as a fictioneer for numerous pulp magazines. His interest in genuine science fiction (as opposed to the kind of SF-Fantasy that filled the pages of pulps) shows in his detailed descriptions of the physics of radio wave propagation, the history of radio transmission, radio wave discoveries, and his knowledge about possibility of life on other planets and their satellites. Of course, this is all science circa the late 1940s and some of it has been disproved, but to readers of this era it must’ve seemed fairly sophisticated stuff in a mystery novel.

This is one of the few detective novels I have read where lycanthropy is treated as a mental illness rather than relying on the usual mythology and legends found in werewolf movies that treat the phenomenon as real. We also learn of the African leopard men who exploited legends of were-leopards to commit ritual revenge murders against rival tribesmen. Apart from Guy Endore’s groundbreaking novel The Werewolf of Paris (1933) there are very few mystery or detective novels that incorporate this rare mental illness in a story of possible werewolf activity. Brown does a good job of wavering between monster lore and abnormal psychology in dealing with the reasons of who or what is killing the men in Tremont. Ultimately, the solution for the bizarre murders is a bit of a letdown but not without one subtle twist. Not until Leslie Whitten wrote Moon of the Wolf (1967) almost twenty years later do we see a truly modern approach to similar ideas explored here.

THINGS I LEARNED: Oliver Heaviside was a self-taught physicist and electrical engineer who in 1902 first theorized about a layer in the atmosphere that reflects radio waves and allows them to travel beyond the horizon. At the same time another physicist in a different part of the world Arthur Kennelly was developing his own theory about radio wave propagation. For decades this atmospheric layer was known as the Kennelly-Heaviside layer. Today it’s known as the E layer of the ionosphere. The Heaviside layer is mentioned early in The Bloody Moonlight when Ed Hunter is talking about Amory’s invention and how it could receive transmissions from outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

Francis "Muggsy" Spanier (1901-1967) was a Chicago cornet player and jazz bandleader I had never heard even though back in my college days I was an ardent fan of swing and big band music. But this ignorance of mine is easily explained because he’s not truly from the swing era. Spanier made his name in the 1920s through the late 1930s prior to the big band era. He was the leading horn player in the Chicago “hot jazz” scene for years until Bix Biederbecke came along overshadowing all that Spanier had accomplished. In the novel, Ed is a jazz enthusiast and asks to hear a Spanier record when he first visits Justine Haberman who happens to have a large collection of jazz albums and a very expensive record player leading us to...

Courtesy of myvintagetv.com

The Capehart Phonograph! This was considered a top-of-the-line record player during the 1930s and 1940s primarily for its ingenious record changing device. It was a real luxury item and cost a pretty penny.  The Capehart had innovative state of the art manufacturing as well as high end cabinetry that made it a combination record player and furniture showpiece. The record changer flipped the record so that the album could play with little interruption from A side to B side or vice versa. The Capehart was so desirable, yet so outrageously priced, that it soon became a symbol of wealth and sophistication in popular culture. There are two websites (here and here) devoted to the Capehart Deluxe phonograph.  The second website includes some impressive pictures of various models. The photos of the Capehart 400 models -- priced between $1000 and $1700 in the 1930s-- are my favorites.  Justine Haberman apparently had some money to throw around!

EASY TO FIND? There are several copies of the original Bantam paperback in the used book market. Hardcover editions, either the US or the UK, tend to be more expensive and those with DJs are priced in the collectible market since Brown has always been a collectible author. A little over ten years ago an indie press released an omnibus of the first four Ed & Am Hunter detective novels called Hunter and the Hunted (Stewart Masters Pub Ltd, 2002) and new copies of that mammoth hardcover reprint can still be found via the leading online book retailer. That same retailer offers eBook editions of all of Brown’s mystery novels but only in Kindle format (obviously). In any case it should be fairly easy to find a copy of this book whether you prefer print or digital.

Deliver Us from Wolves - Leonard Holton

US 1st edition (Dodd Mead, 1963)

Part of the mystique of foreign travel is the total immersion in a different culture. A true traveler does not want to be cocooned in the familiarity of fast food restaurants or signs pointing out everything in English or anything that reminds one of home. Rather he wants to experience the wealth of difference in food, language, and habits of the new country he's visiting. In Deliver Us from Wolves (1963) Father Bredder, the series detective in Leonard Holton's mystery novels, is lucky to have at least the language skills in hand when he is accepts a free round trip ticket to Portugal won by his housekeeper who cannot go. He plans on visiting the holy shrine of the Virgin at Fatima and also is told by his own bishop in California to pay a call on the Bishop of Leiria. When he arrives he discovers the timing of his visit could not have been more fortuitous. His education in a very different part of Portuguese culture will take him into the realm of superstition and the paranormal.

The title Deliver Us from Wolves is the English translation of the Latin phrase "Libera nos a lupis" which keeps cropping up in the oddest places during Father Bredder's brief but very strange stay in Portugal. He first encounters it on a strange claw shaped stone sold to him in a tourist shop filled with tacky souvenirs depicting the image of the Virgin of Fatima on everything from handkerchiefs to kaleidoscopes. The stone turns out to be a talisman and the shopkeeper tells him of the legend of the werewolf that hangs over their town. When Father Bredder visits the Bishop of Leiria he learns even more about the legend of Pedro da Malveira who seems to have once again risen from his grave.

US paperback (Dell 1887, 1966)

Several dead lambs were found on the surrounding farms and at each site a series of bloody wolf footprints that suddenly turn into human footprints have been discovered. A local man has also disappeared and the fear is that he has also been attacked by the ghost of Pedro da Malveira, a 17th century thief executed for witchcraft. The townspeople have succumbed to the legend again and the talk of wolves and lobishomen, the Portuguese word for werewolf, will not stop. Fear and suspicion are controlling the daily habits population. The Bishop would like Father Bredder to discover who is up to mischief and put an end to the werewolf superstitions so the town can return to normal life.

Our priest detective undergoes a crash course in the Portuguese culture and the reader learns with him a lot about Portuguese history and the odd variations of how the werewolf legend is incorporated into their culture. Father Bredder meets Father Painter, a British priest sent to the local parish, who has not been living up to his calling. Church attendance is down and the English priest is apparently is not well liked by the townspeople. In a series of didactic scenes he lectures Father Bredder on the architecture of Portuguese castles, the history of the trial of Pedro Da Malveira, and the local werewolf superstitions. The most interesting aspect of Portuguese lobishomen is the melding of vampire and zombie lore into the werewolf myth. Some of more bizarre features include: the lobishomen has an enlarged big toe, he must return to his grave by daybreak, and he must seek out a new human form by killing a living human in order to make his transformation complete.

Father Bredder is convinced that someone is taking advantage of the lobishomen legend and the story of Pedro da Malveira to cover up some other type of criminal activity. His personal knowledge of his life as a former Marine and the training of attack dogs in his service come into play and help him as a detective in this "busman's holiday" type of book. The detection, however, is limited as the book takes on more of a supernatural/adventure thriller with lots of action sequences replacing the usual scenes of detection.

Iberian Wolf (photo: Terry Whittaker)

Like many of the other books in the Father Bredder series Holton uses a crime plot to discuss aspects of Catholic religion. Here the story of superstitious minded people makes it all the more easy to bring up discussions about the secular minded person contrasted to the man of faith. In addition to the fearful townspeople the priest encounters an atheistic schoolteacher who will not allow even a simple cross in her schoolroom. She shuns all talk of God and will not teach religion to her students. Her brother is the man who has disappeared and Father Bredder suspects he has been killed and the body disposed of or hidden someone in order that the werewolf legend can flourish. He also suspects that her brother was involved in some sort of criminal scheme that leads him to the castle high above the village of Sao Joaquin da Serra where he meets the imperious Countess of Castelbranco.

Deliver Us from Wolves is the fourth book in a series of eleven adventures with Father Bredder. Most of the books are set in Los Angeles where the priest is the parish leader at a convent school. In some of them he travels outside of California, but I believe it is only in this book where he leaves the United States. I learned an awful lot about werewolves, Portuguese culture and religion, Portuguese fortress building (to build on what I already knew from reading Shelley Smith's This Is the House) and the existence of the Iberian wolf, a species of wolf smaller than the North American gray wolf and geographically confined to Portugal and southern Spain. Reading this very unusual and highly entertaining mystery -- oh yes, there's a murder and several other crimes to solve within its pages -- has been the most immersive learning experience in a foreign culture that I've had this year without ever stepping out of my comfortable couch at home.

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This essay is my contribution for "The Tuesday Night Bloggers," a group of vintage mystery book bloggers who write on a specific theme each Tuesday. Throughout the month of May the members of this neo-Tuesday Club will write on various aspects of travel as featured in vintage detective and mystery fiction. Other posts can be found at Curt Evan's highly informative blog The Passing Tramp.  Why not check 'em out?

FFB: Moon of the Wolf - Leslie Whitten

In honor of tonight's "honey moon" and its rare occurrence on Friday the 13th I dug into the archives for this brief overview of a fitting book. Leslie Whitten's book makes a modern use of the phrase "when the wolfsbane blooms/And the moon and is full and bright.".

Whitten wrote one of the most interesting takes on the werewolf legend with his Southern Gothic novel Moon of the Wolf (1967). In it we get a combination of a murder mystery and an exploration of lycanthropy from a psychologist's perspective. A series of murders seem to be the work of a savage animal. Whitten sets his novel in the 1930s so when the first murder victim also turns out to be a black woman we get the additional layer of social criticism of racism in the south. The police sheriff's investigation leads him to a wealthy white family of plantation owners and whispers of illicit sexual relations.

Angry locals insist the girl was attacked by a pack of wild dogs and set out like a posse of Transylvanian villagers to kill them all. But the skeptical sheriff is not convinced. Medical evidence points to violence by a human hand even amid the signs of an animal attack. His questioning of the locals uncovers their superstitious beliefs, the curious practice of hoodoo with its bottle tree and other witchcraft-like talismans, and an odd reference to "Loup Garou." A psychologist enters the picture and begins to explain the legend of the werewolf and lycanthropy as a legitimate mental illness.

Guy Endore treated the werewolf legend as a mental illness in Werewolf of Paris decades earlier, but Whitten makes his approach more accessible and tells the story in such a way that one never really knows if the werewolf is real or imagined. The finale, of course, will settle all that ambiguity with a somewhat startling revelation.

Moon of the Wolf was made into a TV movie (almost faithful to the book) in the 1970s with David Janssen as the sheriff and Bradford Dillman as the primary murder suspect. You can find several versions of the full movie at YouTube. The best quality version I found is here.

FFB: The Undying Monster - Jesse Douglas Kerruish

Originally published in England in 1922. The US edition was published in 1936 no doubt with intent to capitalize on the monster movie mania of the early 1930s.

Utterly fascinating from start to finish. Perhaps the best of the earliest attempts at combining a detective novel with a genuinely supernatural mystery. Most supernatural detective novels start with a bizarre murder that seems to have no earthly explanation, but this one starts with a curse that is firmly believed in and accepted by the family members. Features Luna Bartendale (the literature's first female occult detective) who puts John Silence, Carnacki and Miles Pennoyer to shame with her extensive knowledge of occult rites and practices and beats them all with her "super-sensitive" gift of being able to psychically connect with troubled souls and hypnotize them. She is far more colorful and interesting than Jules De Grandin who required Dr. Trowbridge's ignorance as a foil.

There are all kinds of amazing set pieces – the descent into the Hammand mansion cellars that house a 16th century alchemist's workroom, the discovery of the gruesome Hand of Glory buried in the wall, Luna's use of a divining rod to help her distinguish between benign and malevolent forces. In addition to all the supernatural lore and techniques, Luna is an excellent physical evidence detective. Her discovery and subsequent withholding of crucial evidence leads her to the identity of the murderer very early.

So much of this book served as the basis for the numerous werewolf stories that followed throughout the 30s and 40s. Most notably the doggerel curse used as a frontispiece in the US edition seems to have inspired that other well known rhyming curse that crops up in all the Universal werewolf movies ("Even a man who is pure in heart/And says his prayers at night...").

A movie version made nearly a decade after this was published in the US dispenses with Luna and instead gives us a CSI type doctor, circa 1940s, as the central detective figure. Swanhild is renamed Helga (thankfully!) but is no longer a believer in the supernatural and instead scoffs at all the legends and curses hanging over the family. Oliver is still a twit but toned down a bit. The story also eliminates all the Norse legends and the hypnosis. It's beautifully filmed and atmospherically designed. The sets inside the home and the exteriors of the moors are some of the best in a Hollywood monster movie. But the movie fails to thrill. It could've been far more interesting and original and might have been a real cult classic had it stuck to Kerruish's original story.