House of Cthulhu Book

The stories written prior to 1980 or so tried to be both Robert E Howard muscular and Clark Ashton Smith extravagant. The result is not lean enough to be the first and not purely stylistic or ironic as the second. And he sure loves his twist endings and framing devices, even when these are really unnecessary or obvious.

The best are the Mylakhrion or Tet Atht stories, in particular "The Sorcerer's Book" and "To Kill A Wizard!", adding to that "The Wine of the Wizard".

(On the other end was "Lords of the Morass", which went the Merritt / Haggard route and was entirely too long for its payoff.)

I've heard Lumley described as having a more 'muscular' take on the Lovecraft material, casting it in a more adventurous mode and dispensing with the mind-blasting, paralyzing horror that afflicted most Lovecraft protagonists. His version of the Mythos features the late-model benevolent Elder Gods who keep Cthulhu in check, and a Cthulhu with comprehensible motivations and behavior, which I feel is a diminishment of the original material, even if it is shorn of Lovecraft's excesses and personal failings.