trope: Occult detective

The Stein & Candle Detective Agency

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Straight Outta Fangton: A Comedic Vampire Story

FROM THE BEST SELLING AUTHOR OF THE SUPERVILLAINY SAGA: Peter Stone is a poor black vampire who is wondering where his nightclub, mansion, and sports car are. Instead, he is working a minimum wage job during the night shift as Read more

The Horror on the Links: The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, Volume One

audiobooks available! "Hercule Poirot meets Fox Mulder . . . raises genuine shivers. " Today the names of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith, all regular contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales during the first Read more

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Morton Candle is a tough guy.

He grew up on the streets of Brooklyn, dodging from mobster-ruled neighborhoods to reform school before the army snapped him up and sent him to Europe to fight Hitler. That’s where he met Weatherby Stein, the scion to one of the greatest occult families of Europe. Weatherby and his parents were being held prisoner by the Nazis, forced to use their supernatural knowledge to aid the Third Reich’s war effort.

Now it’s the 1950s.

Reminiscent of old timey detective fiction, these seven creepy crime stories revolve around amateur sleuths from opposite sides of the pond – poor brawny American/rich brainey Brit – and their passion for pursuing paranormal perps of all stripes. Vampires. Hoodoo. Undead. All the crazy of a thriller saturated in deep dark noir enui.

3 Books not shown as a serie on amazon :

 

Kolchak: Penny Dreadful Double Feature

Kolchak: Penny Dreadful Double Feature
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Two novels in one book!
In PENNY DREADFUL: killings in LA appear to be copycat murders based on the Tate-LaBianca slayings. Kolchak meets Domino Patrick (daughter of the original Domino Lady) & learns that the killings are the work of one of the Manson girls.
In TIME STALKER, Dan Sutton encounters Janos Skorzeny in 1943, and is attacked by the vampire just as he begins the transformation into the pulp hero Zero. This propels him and Skorzeny forward in time.
Sutton meets Kolchak & they track the vampire.

Also see the post about the original Kolchak serie adapted as a tv show in the 70’s that inspired Chris Carter to create The X-Files

Kolchak novels by Jeff Rice + 2 new by C. J. Henderson

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The 2 original kolchak novels by Jeff Rice inspired the night stalker 1970 tv show

also supposedly inspired Chris Carter to create The X-Files

after more than three decades out of print, Kolchak’s creator Jeff Rice has released the original novels, The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler are together in one volume

the 2 original can be found here and here on kindle or both together as audiobook here

the 2 by C. J. Henderson can be found here and here

there is also a short stories collection by various authors here

edit : found a new one, Kolchak: Penny Dreadful Double Feature

 

 

Hard Magic: Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles

Hard Magic: Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles
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Jake Sullivan is a war hero, a private eye-and an ex-con. He’s free because he has a magical talent, being able to alter the force of gravity in himself and objects in his vicinity, and the Bureau of Investigation calls on him when they need his help in apprehending criminals with their own magical talents.

But the last operation he was sent along to help with went completely wrong, and Delilah Jones, the woman the G-men were after, who just happened to be an old friend of Jake’s in happier times, had a lot of magical muscle with her, too much muscle for the cops to handle, even with Jake’s help.

It got worse. Jake found out that the Feds had lied to him about Delilah being a murderer as well as a bank robber, and they had lied about this being his last job for them-he was too valuable for them to let him go. And things were even worse than Jake imagined. There was a secret war being waged by opposing forces of magic-users, and Jake had no idea that he had just attracted the attention of one side, whose ruthless leaders were of the opinion that Jake was far too dangerous to be permitted to live…

Dead Things: An Eric Carter Novel

Dead Things
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When his sister is brutally murdered, necromancer Eric Carter returns to Los Angeles where he vows to find out who did it and make them pay as long as they don't kill him first. Original. 30,000 first printing.

Stephen Blackmoore’s dark urban fantasy series follows necromancer Eric Carter through a world of vengeful gods and goddesses, mysterious murders, and restless ghosts.

Necromancer is such an ugly word, but it’s a title Eric Carter is stuck with.

He sees ghosts, talks to the dead. He’s turned it into a lucrative career putting troublesome spirits to rest, sometimes taking on even more dangerous things. For a fee, of course.

When he left LA fifteen years ago, he thought he’d never go back. Too many bad memories. Too many people trying to kill him.

But now his sister’s been brutally murdered and Carter wants to find out why.

Was it the gangster looking to settle a score? The ghost of a mage he killed the night he left town? Maybe it’s the patron saint of violent death herself, Santa Muerte, who’s taken an unusually keen interest in him.

Carter’s going to find out who did it, and he’s going to make them pay.

As long as they don’t kill him first.

The Horror on the Links: The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, Volume One

The Horror on the Links: The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, Volume One
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audiobooks available!

“Hercule Poirot meets Fox Mulder . . . raises genuine shivers. “

Today the names of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith, all regular contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales during the first half of the twentieth century, are recognizable even to casual readers of the bizarre and fantastic. And yet despite being more popular than them all during the golden era of genre pulp fiction, there is another author whose name and work have fallen into obscurity: Seabury Quinn.

Quinn’s short stories were featured in well more than half of Weird Tales’s original publication run. His most famous character, the supernatural French detective Dr. Jules de Grandin, investigated cases involving monsters, devil worshippers, serial killers, and spirits from beyond the grave, often set in the small town of Harrisonville, New Jersey. In de Grandin there are familiar shades of both Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, and alongside his assistant, Dr. Samuel Trowbridge, de Grandin’s knack for solving mysteries—and his outbursts of peculiar French-isms (grand Dieu!)—captivated readers for nearly three decades.

Collected for the first time in trade editions, The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, edited by George Vanderburgh, presents all ninety-three published works featuring the supernatural detective. Presented in chronological order over five volumes, this is the definitive collection of an iconic pulp hero.

The first volume, The Horror on the Links, includes all of the Jules de Grandin stories from “The Horror on the Links” (1925) to “The Chapel of Mystic Horror” (1928), as well as an introduction by George Vanderburgh and Robert Weinberg.

The Best of Jules de Grandin: 20 Classic Occult Detective Stories

The Best of Jules de Grandin: 20 Classic Occult Detective Stories
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Full collection with audiobooks here

“Hercule Poirot meets Fox Mulder . . . raises genuine shivers. “—Kirkus Reviews

A collection of the 20 greatest tales of Jules de Grandin, the supernatural detective made famous in the classic pulp magazine Weird Tales.
Today the names of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith, all regular contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales during the first half of the twentieth century, are recognizable even to casual readers of the bizarre and fantastic. And yet despite being more popular than them all during the golden era of genre pulp fiction, there is another author whose name and work have fallen into obscurity: Seabury Quinn.

Quinn’s short stories were featured in well more than half of Weird Tales’s original publication run. His most famous character, the supernatural French detective Dr. Jules de Grandin, investigated cases involving monsters, devil worshippers, serial killers, and spirits from beyond the grave, often set in the small town of Harrisonville, New Jersey. In de Grandin there are familiar shades of both Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, and alongside his assistant, Dr. Samuel Trowbridge, de Grandin’s knack for solving mysteries—and his outbursts of peculiar French-isms (grand Dieu!)—captivated readers for nearly three decades.

The Best of Jules de Grandin, edited by George Vanderburgh, presents twenty of the greatest published works featuring the supernatural detective. Presented in chronological order with stories from the 1920s through the 1940s, this collection contains the most incredible of Jules de Grandin’s many awe-inspiring adventures.

Something from the Nightside: Nightside Series

Something from the Nightside
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Taylor is the name, John Taylor. My card says I’m a detective, but what I really am is an expert on finding lost things. It’s part of the gift I was born with as a child of the Nightside. I left there a long time ago, with my skin and sanity barely intact. Now I make my living in the sunlit streets of London.

But business has been slow lately, so when Joanna Barrett showed up at my door, reeking of wealth, asking me to find her runaway teenage daughter, I didn’t say no. Then I found out exactly where the girl had gone. The Nightside. That square mile of Hell in the middle of the city, where it’s always three A.M. Where you can walk beside myths and drink with monsters.

Where nothing is what it seems and everything is possible. I swore I’d never return. But there’s a kid in danger and a woman depending on me. So I have no choice—I’m going home.

The Dark Side of the Road (ISHMAEL JONES serie)

The Dark Side of the Road
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Published: 2022-09-06
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ISHMAEL JONES IS ON THE CASE. Paranormal private detective Ishmael Jones is invited to his employer’s country house for Christmas just in time to become embroiled in a locked-room mystery with a supernatural twist. CALL HIM ISHMAEL . . . Ishmael Jones. He’s used to keeping a low profile, living under the radar and on the dark side of the road. He makes his living solving mysteries and uncovering dark secrets some would prefer to stay hidden. But when he’s invited by his employer—a man known only as “The Colonel”—to spend Christmas at the Colonel’s sprawling country house, Ishmael Jones decides to come in from the dark for some holiday cheer.

Jones arrives at the remote Belancourt Manor in the midst of a blizzard only to discover that the Colonel has gone missing. It soon becomes clear that the guests are harboring dark secrets—and that it will be up to Ishmael Jones to stop a savage killer. A locked-room, country house mystery with a supernatural twist as only Simon R. Green could write it. About Simon R. Green: “A macabre and thoroughly entertaining world.” —Jim Butcher on the Nightside series “A splendid riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, conveyed with trademark wisecracking humor, and carried out with maximum bloodshed and mayhem.

In a word, irresistible.” —Kirkus, Starred Review of Simon R. Green’s Night Fall “[F]or those who want a fantasy-genre mash-up that doesn’t slow down.” —Booklist on From a Drood to a Kill “Simon R. Green is a great favorite of mine. It’s almost impossible to find a writer with a more fertile imagination than Simon. He’s a writer who seems endlessly inventive.” —Charlaine Harris

Storm Front: The Dresden Files, Book 1

Storm Front
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Fun fact the audiobooks of this serie are narrated by James Marster the interpret of spike in buffy :) apparently he’s a fan and did an awesome job (i prefer reading myself so i dont know)

 

In the first novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Dresden Files series, Harry Dresden’s investigation of a grisly double murder pulls him into the darkest depths of magical Chicago…

As a professional wizard, Harry Dresden knows firsthand that the “everyday” world is actually full of strange and magical things—and most of them don’t play well with humans. And those that do enjoy playing with humans far too much. He also knows he’s the best at what he does. Technically, he’s the only at what he does. But even though Harry is the only game in town, business—to put it mildly—stinks. So when the Chicago P.D. bring him in to consult on a double homicide committed with black magic, Harry’s seeing dollar signs. But where there’s black magic, there’s a black mage behind it. And now that mage knows Harry’s name… “

A great series—fast-paced, vividly realized and with a hero/narrator who’s excellent company.”—Cinescape