Victor Rousseau Emanuel (1879-1960) was a British-born journalist, novelist and pulp fiction writer who lived at various times in Britain, South Africa, Canada, and the United States. He wrote fiction in a variety of genres, primarily under the pen name “Victor Rousseau.”

I’ve just emerged from a dive down the rabbit hole of Rousseau’s occult detective fiction. In the early years of the twentieth century, he created three series, all featuring occult doctors who solved cases and cured mental illness using—Spiritualism.

Rousseau’s approach to occult detection—occult therapeutics might be a better description—provides a unique twist to the genre, one that that I think is worth revisiting.

You can read my discussion, The Occult Detectives of Victor Rousseau, over at Dark Tales Sleuth. The piece starts off with a general discussion of Rousseau’s approach, and then focuses on Rousseau’s first series, Ivan Brodsky, Surgeon of Souls.

Brodsky is actually one of the earliest of the occult detectives, as we understand them today, having first appeared around 1909. However, most people who know of him at all probably know of him from the later reprinting of his series in Weird Tales, starting in 1926.

Collections of the Brodsky series do exist; but the definitive version is out of print. So for your reading pleasure, I’ve put together a list of links to all the Ivan Brodsky stories that were reprinted in Weird Tales, plus my transcription of an additional story, from its 1911 appearance in a Wisconsin newspaper.

You can find links to the Ivan Brodsky stories here. (At Dark Tales Sleuth)

If you haven’t read these tales before, do check them out! You might be in for a treat.

And of course, I plan to follow up with discussions of Rousseau’s other two occult detectives as well. Stay tuned.