"The Trail of Cthulhu" is the nadir of Derleth's Lovecraftian fiction. It's juvenile, episodic "novel" or not. As a historical and regionalist, journalist, he was a great writer. I attended one of the annual Derleth Society meetings in Sac Prairie. An actor portrayed Derleth reading his poetry and so forth. As a weird fantaisist he is a bit underrated due to the relative mediocrity of the Lovecraftian pastiche.
Source: http://www.eldritchdark.com/forum/read.php…12459#msg-12459