The Last Illusion is a 1985 short story written by Clive Barker as a part of Volume 6 of the Books of Blood. The story marked the debut of Barker's recurring character Harry D'Amour.
D'Amour is a private investigator in New York City when he receives a call for a very odd assignment. A magician, Swann, has died and his wife has been warned there is a threat to his corpse and she needs someone to watch over the body until morning where he is to be cremated.
D'Amour takes the job and so begins his night into one very strange (and magical) night.
The short story is the basis of the 1995 film Lord of Illusions.
This story contains examples of:
- Badass Normal: Harry D'Amour may not have magic powers nor is he some kind of monster but he holds his own with a lot of strangeness.
- Bluff the Imposter: D'Amour uses Dorothea's Insistent Terminology to find out something is not right about her.
- Body Horror: There's plenty of this to go around when Valentin is reveled to be not-human, when several humanoid abominations attack and when the dead bodies of several characters are used as intruments by demons.
- Comforting the Widow: Harry D'Amour has ideas about doing this with the late Swann's wife Dorothea only a few days after Swann's death but she doesn't really seem to care.
- Cryptic Background Reference: Early in this story, Harry D'Amour is haunted by events that happened during the exorcism of Mimi Lomax. Details are scant other than that Mimi went mad, the exorcist Father Hesse was likely sodomized to death and Harry witnessed the whole thing while begging Mimi's demon lover for mercy. More detail is given in the novel Everville, where Harry encounters the demon once again, which results in Doing In the Wizard.
- Deal with the Devil: Swann made one to learn how to do real magic and once he realized the price he paid he started doing things to tick the bad guys off.
- Evil Sorcerer: Butterfield is a lawyer who happens to be one of these, or at least a henchman within the grand scheme of things to the Gulfs.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Valentin uses what little life he has left to start a blaze around Swann's body to end this, or at least a way to tap into Swann's ability to do it himself.
- Hollywood Exorcism: Harry's involvement in one of these is alluded to in flashback, and the experience continues to haunt him in the early part of the story.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Dorothea was one before she met Swann. According to Valentin this is why Swann chose to marry her.
- Insistent Terminology: Dorothea teaches D'Amour very early on that Swann was just an "illusionist" and not a magician. However this was clearly a lie whether Dorothea knew it or not.
- The Last Title: used for the name of the story.
- Magicians Are Wizards: Either Swann worked as a stage magician but was capable of real magic, or Swann pretended to be a fake simply as a Take That! to the infernal powers he bargained with.
- Mind Screw: Several of the events in Harry's night are this, including talking to a woman who believes herself to be inside of a tiger. Harry tries to run with her down the stairs, but she runs back up the stairs. When Harry catches up to her he sees only part of her hanging out of the tiger's mouth as he swallows her.
- Not Quite Dead: Harry assumes Valentin is dead after the street attack, but it turns out, no he wasn't.
- Not Quite Human: Harry begins to suspect something is not quite right with Valentin when he returns from the attack on the street and during a confrontation he learns he was actually Swann's familar disguised as his friend.
- Occult Detective: Harry D'Amour is a noirish private detective in the present day who has investigated several paranormal cases, including an exorcism that he recently performed. Mostly by accident he is then introduced into the world of magicians and wizards.
- Private Detective: Harry D'Amour, of the worn-down, worldly-wise sort.
- Stage Magician: Swann has a world famous career as this but he's much more than that.
