Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, does not always play out when the imitation proves to be a satire. I was surprised to hear that the great Jules de Grandin, the most popular and highest paid for character in Weird Tales had been parodied. To make it even more unusual, it was in 1943, eight years before the French ghostbreaker would hang it up after “The Ring of Bastet” (Weird Tales, September 1951). Fourteen more de Grandin stories would be published after the parody appeared.
The story was called “The Last Case of Jules de Granjerque” (that’s de grand jerk) and it appeared in the April 1943 issue of Fantastic Adventures. The author hid behind a pseudonym but perhaps not out of fear. His name was David Wright O’Brien and he had four stories in the issue, one under Bruce Dennis, one under Clee Garson, this story as John York Cabot and a fourth under his own name. The twenty-five year old who wrote these stories was something at that.
David Wright O’Brien (1919-1944) was the nephew of Farnsworth Wright, the editor who bought all the Jules de Grandin stories up to 1940, when he died of Parkinson’s. O’Brien had the courtesy to wait until his uncle passed before mocking the most popular character in his magazine. Wright wrote half the issue as we saw earlier, and this was while serving in the Air Force during WWII. He would be killed a year later in a bombing run, ending his meteroic SF career at a stunning 57 stories in six years (some written with his friend and collaborator, William P. McGivern).
The plot of “The Last Case of Jules de Granjerque” is not so different than a real de Grandin story. A realtor with a haunted mansion calls de Grandjerque’s Watson, Dr. Throwbunk, to hire the French detective. The two set off in a thunderstorm (which is usual, as Dr. Throwbunk points out) and battle with the mud on the back roads. After a much longer trip than the story required, they enter the mansion (its door unlocked, of course) and encounter the ghost. De Grandjerque is not afraid and collars him quickly. He is a criminal on the run who has been hiding out in the house (an idea that dates back to the Gothics). The thief dressed up in a bedsheet and chains to scare off the latest tenants. De Grandjerque gives him a sporting chance to escape before informing the authorities. In leaving the thug takes off his disguise and realizes that he is an actual ghost. The tale ends with de Granjerque in a madhouse, where Dr. Throwbunk visits him, from his own room across the hall. The final result is a tepid comedy with little fantastic element that deserved to be buried at the back of the issue.
“The Last Case of Jules de Granjerque” is a fairly soft parody. Jules treats Dr. Throwbunk with a rude and conniving attitude (drinking all his whiskey, letting him get out and push the car when stuck in the mud, calls him a moron) but as with most of the fun poked at the story, Quinn’s writing is not much different. O’Brien even creates a few bogus cases, along with lame explanations. Those mentioned include: “The Case of the Horned Santa” (antler’s on a coat rack) and “The Case of the Widow’s Werewolf” (marathoner ran through the lady’s boudoir). The biggest difference is that Jules de Granjerque claims all supernatural activity is bunk. The real de Grandin would not say such a thing, but some of his cases do prove to be non-supernatural in nature (such as “The Great God Pan” with its fake monster or “Conscience Maketh Cowards” that hinges on psychology). These less supernatural cases became more prominent as the series went on (and Quinn got bored with vampires and Asian goddesses) and this may be O’Brien’s point.
Reader response in the letter column was almost non-existent. In June 1943, a Loretta Beasley asked if John York Cabot could do a send-up of another detective such as Harelock Soames. (The first Sherlock Holmes parodies date back to “The Great Pegram Mystery” (1892) by Robert Barr. It’s no surprise Ray Palmer didn’t snap up this idea.) The editor’s reply was that Cabot would not be able to for a while because he was now in Uncle Sam’s Air Force. Seabury Quinn did not write anything, nor did his lawyer, that we know of. All of this points to a few thoughts. First, it shows how famous Jules de Grandin was in 1943, but also how his star was fading. De Grandin was the most written about occult detective in literary history up to this point. With ninety-three stories by 1951, no other character had so many cases. E. Hoffman Price wrote seven cases about Peter D’Artois for WT but dropped the series because readers thought he was copying Quinn. Not until Manly Wade Wellman’s Judge Hilary Pursuivant and John Thunstone would another ghostbreaker find a career in Weird Tales. Only in other mediums such as television and comics books would there be another ghostbreaker with a larger volume of stories.
