Ghostly Clients and Demonic Culprits: The Roots of Occult Detective Fiction

Before Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Agents Mulder and Scully, and Carl Kolchak . . . Before Jules de Grandin, John Silence, and Carnacki the Ghost Finder . . . The roots of occult detective fiction reach as far back as ancient Rome, where two master plots emerged. The first involves a character whose courage and intelligence solves the mystery of a troubled spirit: a ghostly client. In the second, a character must investigate and vanquish a much more wicked supernatural foe: a demonic culprit. Showcasing E.T.A. Hoffmann, Charlotte Riddell, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Machen, and other authors, Ghostly Clients & Demonic Culprits charts the history of both plots, from antiquity to fully formed occult detectives in the early 1900s.