The Scarlet Gospels was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2015, after decades of anticipation. The novel brings together two of Barker’s recurring characters: the Hell Priest (never actually called “Pinhead” in Barker’s fiction, though the name stuck from the films) and Harry D’Amour, the occult private investigator who first appeared in the Books of Blood story “The Last Illusion” and has recurred in several of Barker’s works.
The Hell Priest has systematically murdered every magician on Earth, absorbing their knowledge in preparation for an assault on Lucifer himself. D’Amour, drawn into the conflict through his friend Norma Paine (a blind medium), must follow the Hell Priest into Hell — a physical place in Barker’s mythology, a vast, decaying city of the damned — to rescue her.
Barker’s Hell is not Dante’s orderly hierarchy of punishment but a crumbling empire: the demons are tired, the bureaucracy is corrupt, and Lucifer himself has been absent for centuries. The Hell Priest’s ambition — to overthrow the existing order and install himself as ruler — is both megalomaniacal and pathetic, and Barker grants his most famous creation a death scene that is both spectacular and oddly moving.
The novel was long in gestation and shows signs of it — the prose is less polished than Barker’s best work, and the pacing is uneven — but for readers who have followed the Hell Priest through three decades of fiction and film, the closure is satisfying.
Collecting The Scarlet Gospels
First edition (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2015): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $15–$35
- Very good/very good: $8–$15
- Signed: $40–$100