Pierre D’Artois, Occult Detective
Evil Cults! Powerful sorcerers! Supernatural entities summoned from beyond! Damsels in distress! Welcome to the world of Pierre D’Artois, occult detective and master fencer, a creation of E. Hoffmann Price. The only other story of Price I had read before this was his collaboration with H. P. Lovecraft, Through the Gates of the Silver Key, and that was so tied up in Lovecraft’s world that it was hard to tell much about Price’s writing. Still, it wasn’t bad, and since I’m always happy to meet another occult detective, I decided to give Pierre D’Artois a chance. I don’t regret it (except Satan’s Garden, which just went on, and on, and on, and One Arabian Night), but these stories felt like missed opportunities. There’s 9 of them, by the way:
- The Word of Santiago (1926)
- The Peacock’s Shadow (1926)
- The Bride of the Peacock (1932)
- The Return of Balkis (1933)
- Lord of the Fourth Axis (1933)
- The Devil’s Crypt (1934)
- Satan’s Garden (1934)
- Queen of the Lilin (1934)
- One Arabian Night (1934)
Most take place in Bayonne, a French city with its own haunted past:
Anything may thunder and whisper from the ancient night of the passages and labyrinths that undermine Bayonne. Bayonne was founded by the Romans, whose legionaries worshipped Mithra and Cybele in subterranean crypts. The Saracens, the Spanish, the French, the Bearnais have made this the playground of armies, and have enriched the earth with dead. This is all soil well raked over, and alive with strange seeds. Apostate priests have chanted the terrible foulness of the Black Mass, and medieval necromancers and thaumaturgists have pursued their crafts in those unremembered red passages and vaults.
The Bride of the Peacock
Those underground secret passages and chambers often serve as the villains’ headquarters in several of the stories and the city is a living presence throughout.
THE WORD OF SANTIAGO
The first story was not what I was expecting. It begins with the titular Santiago asking his evil god to help him defeat D’Artois in a duel, then there’s a long description of said duel, and a brief encounter between D’Artois and a future villain. I kept reading because of the opening paragraph and the stories are short:
In a sombre, black-tapestried room of a château perched high on a Pyreneean crest overlooking both France and Spain, was an altar, a block of teakwood whose thirty-three grotesquely carved panels depicted the thirty-three strange diversions of gods and men: age-old monstrosities, bold in their antique frankness; unsavory survivals of primitive fancies; the materialized visions of unhallowed Asian mysteries.
Price was pretty good at setting the scenery (even if the 'Asian mysteries' bit would probably not fly today), and this was visible in every story (yes, even in Satan’s Garden). The first tale also introduced the Peacock cult, worshippers of Satan in the form of Malik Taus, the rebel angel who refused to kneel before God’s human creations. There’s a more positive interpretation of his actions that sees God’s request as a test and that the angel’s refusal to put Man in the same plane as God meant he passed and made him God’s most faithful servant. The cult serves as the antagonist in the first 3 stories, after which any attempt at maintaining any sort of continuity between the stories was abandoned. Really, continuity wasn’t Price’s forte.
THE PEACOCK’S SHADOW
Unlike its predecessor, it began as a proper occult detective story - D’Artois has been tasked with finding a missing mummy and enlists his friend Landon, who’s his sidekick for the first 5 adventures, to help him break into the culprit’s place. However, what looks like a simple theft turns out to be a lot more and D’Artois crosses paths with the Peacock cult once more in the form of a friend of Santiago’s:
Etienne, Marquis de la Tour de Maracq! He who had stolen the mummy of a princess; he who lived surrounded by death’s symbols, a servant of polycephalous idols, he who studied an obscure book bound in human hide, found time also to act as high priest of the silver peacock.
The Marquis plans a human sacrifice to atone for what he believes was his role in the death of his friend and also appease the Peacock after Santiago’s defiance, and it’s up to D’Artois and Landon to save their first damsel in distress: Lili Allzaneau. Naturally, all this takes place in the secret passageways and chambers underneath Bayonne. This story was where the sidekick’s narration started and I wasn’t a fan. Yes, I know that the sidekick as narrator is a time-honoured tradition, but it was frustrating to be stuck with Landon, who knows nothing about the occult and therefore doesn’t understand what’s going on, instead of seeing what D’Artois is up to. This structure wouldn’t be a problem if Price spent more time on the investigation before splitting the 2 of them. Since he doesn’t, this ends up resulting in several info-dumps in the end when D’Artois explains what it was all about to Landon (and the readers). Unfortunately, the focus on the sidekick became more and more intrusive, especially when Glenn Farrell entered the picture later on.
THE BRIDE OF THE PEACOCK
The Peacock saga came to an end with The Bride of the Peacock, in which D’Artois and Landon finally face the cult in full force. There’s no more singular adepts’ individual grievances - this time, it’s all about world domination. Like in The Peacock’s Shadow, this started as an apparently simple case, with D’Artois and Landon trying to help Diane Livaudais, the lover of the supposedly deceased, Peacock-worshipping Marquis, who’s been receiving messages from him, asking her to dig up his grave. Soon, however, it turns into a world domination plot by the Peacock cult.
The master sits on the high throne. The girl is as one dead, awaiting the command to pass through the veil of fire to become the Bride of the Peacock. It is the night of power.
There was a lot of build-up, with D’Artois and Landon watching over Diane during the night, and trying to figure out what was going on, while having to defend themselves from the villain’s seemingly unstoppable minions. The sword fights were pretty good and thankfully not as long as the duel with Santiago. Price also developed the Peacock cult more, revealing the existence of 2 warring factions, with the evil one being led by Abdul Malaak, the stranger that D’Artois met in The Word of Santiago. I had some issues with this since up until now, Price had made it clear that Santiago and his friend the Marquis were worshipping Satan, with no indication that their behaviour and beliefs were outliers. The Marquis not being dead wasn’t exactly a surprise, and when he and Landon were forced to team up I was happy - heroes having to work with former antagonists can be pretty fun. However, after being so careful tying everything together, Price decided to ignore the attempted sacrifice of Lili in the previous story. Worse, the Marquis got to compare Abdul Malaak’s version of the Peacock cult unfavourably with his following of the true faith. Would that be the faith that is fine with human sacrifices and books bound in human skin? I don’t get why the Marquis couldn’t have just remained a bad guy who worked with the good guys out of self-preservation. Price’s explanation of the cult’s methods was a bit silly. They’re basically focusing their will power, but instead of just describing it like that, he decided to say they were using 'vibrations'. He did give readers some good descriptions of that evil rhythm, though:
The stones beneath us quivered. I could feel the world rocking on its foundations. That maddening music finally spoke in a wordless language of riot and pillage and chaos. And high above the adepts arms crossed on his breast, sat Abdul Malaak, directing the doom.
The plot to brainwash Diane and turn her into their spy was too elaborate, though, but it allowed Price to end the story with the usual damsel in distress rescuing + black magic ritual combo. I kept expecting the Peacock cult to come back for a rematch, but it never did.
THE RETURN OF BALKIS
With The Return of Balkis, Price ditched the international cults and went for something more straightforward. Here, D’Artois and Landon help yet another beautiful young woman afflicted by a supernatural menace. Madeleine Delorme has been selected as a vessel for the spirit of the long-dead Queen of Sheba by an evil sorcerer and every night she comes closer to being fully possessed.
I dare not relax. Not for a moment. It is waiting and ready, lurking beside me. It is gaining in strength. At times I feel that I am some one else. I’m afraid to leave the house. It might take possession of me, and lead me - oh, good God, but where might it not lead me?
I liked it when Landon mentioned the possibility of a Christian exorcism and D’Artois told him it wouldn’t work because it would mean nothing to Balkis. Madeleine’s predicament was too similar to Diane’s, right down to the 2 men watching over her. I could’ve maybe accepted the villain being a random sorcerer with no personality, but the way Price handled D’Artois’s friend Nureddin was just bad. Since he was going to end up sacrificing himself to save Madeleine’s soul, he should’ve had way more pagetime. And he would have, if it weren’t for the stupid narrator sidekick. Yes, Landon gives some crazy dramatic narration:
His words were a colossal blasphemy and a superhuman magnificence that echoed the voice of that arch-rebel, Lucifer, Son of the Morning, crying the defiance across the vastnesses of the gulf into which he had been hurled. And I knew that when he reached the climax of that awful invocation, Madeleine would be for ever damned to wander in unfathomable blacknesses.
But surely Price could’ve set aside a few paragraphs to give some more details about D’Artois and Nureddin’s shared history and show more meaningful interactions between the two? Landon’s narration also robbed readers of a confrontation between D’Artois, Nureddin, Nureddin’s men, and a monstrous being created by the combined mental power of the evil Count Istavan’s followers, and instead of a big magic battle, all we get is Landon cracking some heads. The description of Nureddin’s banishing of Balkis and the rescue of Madeleine was of course, great, but it didn’t compensate for the rest.
Ya Balkis! Ya Balkis, malikat us-Sabahh! Beloved of Suleiman! The thief and the spoiler has robbed the grave and called you from being queen among the quiet dead. The mocker and the defiler has disturbed your rest. Ya Balkis, come forth from the body which you have invaded!
LORD OF THE FOURTH AXIS
This was the first story not set in Bayonne and was also the last one to be narrated by Landon. It broke the mould some more by not featuring any imperiled women, as they got to Louise Marigny well before the cult. So, D’Artois travels to New Orleans to stop another evil cult from unleashing the same outer-dimensional energy that helped Genghis Khan build his empire.
In their terror, Europeans - your ancestors and mine - called him the Scourge of God, but they were wrong. He was the neophyte, the insignificant servant of Him who is beyond the scope of our God who rules a universe of three dimensions.
To achieve this, the Master needs 3 special rugs that will align in a special way to open a passage between dimensions. All the talk of angles and dimensions reminded me of Lovecraft’s Dreams in the Witch-House, and Price would use much of these same concepts in their Through the Gates of the Silver Key. I found the rugs pretty ridiculous, and D’Artois deciding to study the one they got from Louise instead of destroying it was unbelievably dumb. The cult’s power was impressive, but it had about as much personality as Count Istavan. Yes, Landon’s narration is limiting, but there was no reason for why he couldn’t have been present when the Master spoke with D’Artois so readers could find out more about the main villain. The setting may have been different, but Price made sure to stick everyone underground, so they might’ve as well have stayed in Bayonne. There was also more talk of vibrations and we got some more evil rhythms.
There was a moment of silence as heavy as that which broods in the lost gulfs between the uttermost stars, and the farthest frontiers of space; and then the resonant, majestic note of a brazen gong rang through the hall, mighty as the greeting to a god stepping from world to world across the vastnesses of unlimited space. It rolled and thundered, and died to a whisper like the rustling of silk and the hissing of serpents, then swelled full-throated and triumphant in a peal of colossal splendor, its surge and sweep shaking that cyclopean vault and reaching the unplumbed depths of creation.
It was this story that destroyed any hopes I still had for Price’s interest in maintaining continuity between stories. At one point, this fourth dimensional being was referred to as Lord of the Outer Marches, which was one of the titles of the Peacock. Why add that and not have the characters remember the other evil cult they had previously fought? The ritual had some suitably ambitious purposes, but the story could’ve been longer. The same could be said of The following story, The Devil’s Crypt.
THE DEVIL’S CRYPT
I called these stories missed opportunities and nowhere is that clearer than in the sixth tale. D’Artois is back in Bayonne, sans Landon, and so is Louise Marigny, who dies off-page, leaving her twin sister, Yvonne, to be saved by the occult detective and their mutual friend Davis Barrett. I didn't get Price's choice. It would’ve made a lot more sense to have Yvonne die and the character the readers already knew live to interact with D’Artois and his temporary sidekick. Then again, maybe Price just reused the name and it wasn’t even supposed to be the same character. It all started out as a relatively simple story of an evil sorcerer, José Guevara Millamediana, killing people so he can use their blood to bind the demons he’s summoning.
“I see more than murder and mutilation,” he declared. “I see a sinister configuration that cries out of an old and malignant magic.”
However, it suddenly got more complicated with the reveal of the existence of strange creatures underneath the city and an ancient feud between a previous incarnation of Don José and Sidi Abdurrahman, the occultist D’Artois asks for help, that began all the way back in Atlantis.
I have returned to accomplish where once I failed. You escaped me, ages ago, when the Dragons of Wisdom proclaimed the black night of doom for lost Atlantis. I failed, but in the many lives I have lived since then, I have gained power against power, and will against your will!
Price could’ve written a whole novel with that plot, but instead Don José and his minions were quickly defeated, with Sidi Abdurrahman dying afterwards like Nureddin in The Return of Balkis. What’s the point of coming up with interesting ideas and then do nothing with them? The Devil’s Crypt also featured one of the worst lines: 'fumes of blood'. Really? Fumes? In terms of narration, after 4 stories told in the first person, Price decided to switch to third person, though he still never showed D’Artois away from Barrett. This time, it felt justified, since Barrett was the one attacked by a supernatural creature while D’Artois went to fetch Sidi Abdurrahman, and the pagetime was more balanced.
SATAN'S GARDEN
This is the longest of the stories and shows Pierre D’Artois and Glenn Farrell help Antoinette Delatour, whose nightmares of being a slave girl in the fabled Paradise Garden of the deadly Hashisheen have started to leave very real physical marks on her body. By the time this story was published in Weird Tales, Farrell had already appeared in 2 other stories, Silver Peacock and The King’s Peacock, both published in 1933 in other magazines. I thought that the length would mean more pagetime for D’Artois - I was wrong. Even though Price stuck with third person narration, he still focused more on Farrell rather than him and made me feel like I maybe owed poor Landon an apology for all the mean things I had said about his narration. Most of Satan’s Garden consisted of Farrell pretending to be a belligerent, drunk Afghan, and D’Artois was practically the sidekick, providing some useful information to Farrell and then arriving in the end with the police to help finish defeating Evil Cult 3. By the way, I reviewed the individual stories on X (formerly Twitter) and when I got to this one, the Israel/Hamas conflict had already started. That was some really awkward timing… Farrell is your typical adventurer, more likely to solve a problem with brawn than brains, and very much aware of feminine beauty. He’s not dumb, and can be occasionally sneaky, but he’s more of an action man than the quieter D’Artois, and it’s clear that was Price’s preferred type of leading man.
Remember, one false move will betray your mission. And the first warning you will receive will be a dagger jammed very deeply into your back. You are flirting with sudden death the moment you leave this house.
In Satan’s Garden, he reused the same evil cult intent on world domination + female spy storylines from The Bride of the Peacock, though instead of trying to brainwash a single woman into spying for them, the Hashisheen already have a whole network of spies led by the beautiful La Dorada, who’s almost a dead ringer for Antoinette. Their leader, Hassan, was a good villain, even if I rolled my eyes when he used his secret trapdoor on Farrell… just like Abdul Malaak did to Landon. I was wondering how this highly efficient cult could be stopped, but they conveniently turned into bumbling idiots when it was time for them to be defeated. For some reason, Price decided to waste all this build-up of an international conspiracy on a weirdly convoluted plot. First, Hassan had La Dorada killed so he could trick his men into thinking she’ll be waiting for them in their Paradise Garden and later kidnapped Antoinette to maintain the illusion.
A cold horror clutched Farrell as he heard that dead woman’s caressing voice entrance the thaumaturges with promises that no human woman could fulfill or even imagine. Her voice was a poison sweetness, a full-throated richness that pronounced the beguilements of Lilith chanting to the Morning Star.
Then, after Farrell killed his second-in-command, he was going to have Antoinette as La Dorada killed so her spirit could bring his soul back from the dead, which apparently involves summoning another entity from somewhere using more evil rhythms. WTF? At least the Master had his priorities straight, and Abdul Malaak had better motive to go after Diane. And what’s with all the evil music? Frankly, the use of the Hashisheen as antagonists felt more like an excuse to add some eye candy (yes, I know this is a book, but you know what I mean) and more fight scenes. And as if reusing that part of the plot of The Bride of the Peacock wasn’t enough, we got yet another Marquis who used to work with the enemy until he found out about their nefarious plans and became a prisoner. The Marquis des Islots also turns out to be the one who was tormenting Antoinette, using magic to make her switch bodies with one of the girls in the Hashisheen’s very real garden, so he could punish her for turning him down. This means that he was torturing 2 people, but for some reason, Price decided to redeem him by letting him sacrifice himself to save Antoinette after her soul drifted away (so there’s a little of The Return of Balkis, too). Was I supposed to care about this random character who ended up taking up pagetime that could’ve been given to D’Artois? Because I didn’t. The strange creatures who live underground got a mention and in the end it looked like everyone was going to be attacked by them, but then it was just D’Artois and the police wearing 1930’s diving suits. Such stupid choices.
QUEEN OF THE LILIN
If Satan’s Garden recycled The Bride of the Peacock, Queen of the Lilin, reused some of the plot of The Return of Balkis. It also brought back Diane Livaudais, though there was no acknowledgment of her previous role. This time, she finds herself facing some odd, potentially deadly accidents involving artifacts connected to Count Erich. D’Artois thinks it’s supernatural, but Glenn Farrell is sceptical because he apparently forgot the summoning he witnessed in Satan’s Garden. Price changed things up a bit by making the Count lose control of his magic and trying to fight against the real culprit, Lilith, whom he had summoned with the help of 5 adepts, but there were just way too many similarities between this and The Return of Balkis. Lilith was a good villain, though, and much more active that Balkis.
Baali, I rose from the perished memories of uncounted lovers. From the dust of their dead brains and from the lingering traces of their time-bleached souls - bleached gray in the home of the cheerless dead - there came once a memory of me, and I lived.
I just didn’t like that Price decided to give her jealousy as motivation. Maybe at first, before she freed herself from Erich, but having her target Diane again after that was just dumb. At least he added a zombie attack.
The vault had become a swamp of dark blood and darker things which paddled about in it. Then, as their motion became more directed and more terribly distinct, Farrell saw the pattern of the devilish manifestation: they were closing in on Graf Erich to exact their revenge.
I guess he really wanted this Count to also be torn to pieces and there were no other options available. And of course Price opted for more thought vibrations and resonances to explain the summoning of Lilith. Why? Just say the Count and the adepts used the Lilith statuette D’Artois found and some ancient ritual to summon her and leave it at that. Queen of the Lilin was the first time Price stayed with D’Artois while he did some more research at the Count’s place instead of focusing on Farrell. I thought this meant good things for the last story featuring D’Artois - I was wrong.
ONE ARABIAN NIGHT
This puts together D’Artois, Farrell, and Ismeddin, another Price creation who starred in his own series of stories. The 3 find themselves in the hidden kingdom that the Queen of Sheba ruled so many ages ago, and become involved in an attempt to save Makeda, a beautiful young woman who’s going to be sacrificed to the Moon goddess.
As before, a girl sat on the sacrificial block: nude save for the jeweled girdle, arms crossed on her breast, and her head inclined. She awaited doom in drugged tranquility, and the tall priest stood by to receive the fatal knife from the hands of the acolyte who was whetting it with deliberate, ceremonial gestures.
The fact that this story was originally published in Spicy-Adventure Stories should’ve been a major red flag. One Arabian Night fulfilled the promise of Satan’s Garden - a fantasy kingdom filled with bloodhirsty men and beautiful women. After everything, I shouldn’t have expected any real exploration of the history of this ancient city or any mentions of The Return of Balkis, but Price didn’t even bother explaining why they were there. Ismeddin barely did anything, and d’Artois… Ugh! He was just Farrell’s friend, 'Colonel Pierre D’Artois, on leave from the French Air Service to pilot Farrell’s plane to Africa'. This was pretty much the Farrell show and most of it consisted of him getting laid. In the end, it turned out that Makeda had tricked him into thinking that she was the one to be sacrificed so he’d save her cousin, but I guess Price expected readers to believe she totally had the hots for Farrell. By the way, after learning of her deception, he was all upset that she made him risk his life to save a stranger. Were they really going to sit around while 2 more girls were sacrificed? And if he’s supposed to like Makeda, shouldn’t he understand her concern for her cousin? What a jerk. This was a shitty send-off for Pierre D’Artois.
VERDICT
After reading all 9 stories, I see the first 4 as a set, introducing elements that Price reused and reworked in the next 4. We basically end up with 3 (unrelated) evil cults intent on world domination, 2 undeservedly redeemed Marquis, 2 Counts summoning a female spirit, lots of evil rhythms (did Price hate music or something?), and so much sidekick focus that D’Artois’s role became increasingly diminished. It was frustrating seeing Price waste all these interesting possibilities. He was obviously good at coming up with a basic premise and setting the scenery, with dramatic descriptions, summonings, and haunting settings, but he never really bothered to develop any of it. Even the mysteries of High Asia were kept vague apart from Price’s version of the Peacock worship, though given when these stories were written, that might’ve been for the best. Unfortunately, the underdeveloped scenarios and storylines ended up making the repetitions more obvious and annoying. Price said that being a prolific writer helped him hon his craft, by the time I got to One Arabian Night, it looked like he had devolved. His insistence in sidelining his supposed lead character in favour of his more conventional friends didn’t help. Throughout the stories I also noticed a struggle between the supernatural elements and action sequences for predominance, with the former clearly losing for the latter. Price is said to have stopped writing D’Artois stories because people thought he had copied Seabury Quinn’s Jules de Grandin, but I don't believe it. D'Artois is a good character: he's not a know-it-all like Paul Ernst's Ascott Keane, and has a better personality than William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki and Algernon Blackwood's John Silence. However, judging by the evolution of his writing and what he chose to focus on, I think Price just realized that occult detecting with an older, non horny lead wasn’t his thing.
By Danforth