Jules de Grandin

Jules de Grandin
Drawing of a white haired man with a moustache facing right, holding a glass of wine in his left hand.
Jules de Grandin, picture by Virgil Finlay
First appearanceWeird Tales
Created bySeabury Quinn
In-universe information
OccupationOccult detective
NationalityFrench

Jules de Grandin is a fictional occult detective that, from 1925-1951, starred in 92 short stories and one novel by Seabury Quinn in the pulp magazine anthology series Weird Tales. In the pages of Weird Tales, Quinn also authored a serialized novel featuring de Grandin entitled The Devil’s Bride, which deals with a young girl being kidnapped by satanists. In 1966, Arkham House published a collection of 10 de Grandin stories as The Phantom Fighter, leading some fans to refer to the character by this nickname afterward. The character's methods of reasoning and investigation has led to comparisons with Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.

In the stories, de Grandin is a French physician who is physically fit, with blonde hair and blue eyes. A former member of the French Sûreté, de Grandin becomes an expert in the occult and is eager to lend his aid and investigative skills when called. De Grandin lives in Harrisonville, New Jersey, and often new cases are brought to his attention by Jeremy Costello of the Harrisonville Police Department. Similar to Sherlock Holmes having a supporting cast of the landlady/housekeeper Mrs. Hudson and his aid and biographer Dr. Watson, de Grandin has a housekeeper named Nora McGinnis and is assisted on his investigation by Dr. Trowbridge, a fellow physician who narrates the stories. In his stories, De Grandin sometimes encounters otherworldly beings such as ghosts and werewolves, but in several instances he discovers the danger at hand is not supernatural as others suspected but simply the evil acts of ordinary people who are corrupt.