Strictly speaking, Dennis Wheatley (1897-1977) was not a pulp author. The English gentleman did not cut his teeth penning yarns in the British equivalent of Weird Tales. Rather, after surviving the horrors of Flanders as a member of the Royal Field Artillery, and after taking over his family’s wine business in London, Wheatley dived head-first into writing. His preferred form was the adventure novel.
Wheatley’s debut, 1933’s The Forbidden Territory, introduced to the world the men that he would christen, “modern musketeers” — the Duc De Richleau, Rex Van Ryn, Richard Eaton, and Simon Aron. De Richleau is a severe-looking gentlemen with arched eyebrows, a slim build, and a magician’s countenance. He is a born aristocrat of Franco-Russian extraction and a former officer in the French, Turkish, and White Russian armies. De Richleau is also an avowed monarchist, a secret agent for the British government, and an occult adept who learned his sizable skills from a Malagasy white magician.
De Richleau’s best friends are Rex Van Ryn, an American aviator and World War I ace, Richard Eaton, a newspaper magnate for one of the UK’s top conservative rags, and Simon Aron, a progressive Anglo-Jewish banker. These men make for a odd couple: De Richleau is the arch-conservative with a disdain for Freemasonry, while Aron hob-nobs with Fabian Society types. Van Ryn is more or less an apolitical playboy. Altogether, these “modern musketeers” are masters of high adventure, and Wheatley features them in eleven novels published between 1933 and 1970.
In The Forbidden Territory, Van Ryn goes missing in the frozen wastes of Siberia after running into trouble during a hunt for lost White Russian treasure. De Richleau, Aron, and Eaton enter into Soviet territory in order to secure their friend’s release. The Forbidden Territory is a straight action novel that never makes any qualms about the author’s disgust for Bolshevism. Wheately was a reactionary of the first order and a member of naval intelligence during the Second World War. He likely rubbed shoulders with Ian Fleming, and without question novels like The Forbidden Territory influenced Fleming’s James Bond character.
The second novel in the series is Wheatley’s crowning achievement. Published in 1934 and famously filmed by Hammer Studios in 1968, The Devil Rides Out is arguably the greatest occult adventure story ever composed. Whereas Van Ryn is the one distressed in The Forbidden Territory, it is Aron whose life is in danger in The Devil Rides Out. Because of a beautiful woman, Aron is initiated into a devil worship cult in London that is headed by a sinister figure named Mocata. Mocata is an obvious stand-in for Aleister Crowley, the man once dubbed by the British press as the “wickedest man in the world” for his many occult exploits. The Devil Rides Out pits De Richleau against Mocata in a supernatural battle that even includes an appearance by Lucifer himself on Salisbury Plain.
The success of The Devil Rides Out essentially built Wheatley’s brand, and thereafter he specialized in novels dealing with black magic. He even became something of an expert on occult matters, too. The modern musketeers would have other occult adventures, notably 1941’s Strange Conflict and 1970’s Gateway to Hell. Strange Conflict was published during World War II, and the war provides the main plot point of the novel. The Germans are so desperate to know the routes of London’s Atlantic convoys that they hire a powerful voodoo priest. De Richleau, Van Ryn, Eaton and Aron journey to Haiti in order to put the machinations to rest. In Gateway to Hell, the final novel in the series, Van Ryn has once again gone missing. This time he seems to have absconded to Argentina with over a million dollars. De Richleau quickly discovers that there is more at play than just a crime — Van Ryn has fallen into the clutches of a truly evil conspiracy.
Although Wheatley’s occult adventure novels were his forte (and the very things that inspired Black Sabbath and thus the entire history of heavy metal), he continued to write straight adventure and crime novels as well. 1938’s The Golden Spaniard is set during the Spanish Civil War and features a rare pro-Franco sentiment from a Anglophone author. 1940’s Three Inquisitive People was actually the first novel that Wheatley ever wrote, and this well-structured whodunit features the anxiety of influence (the influence in question being Agatha Christie). The remain of the De Richleau series features espionage tales set during both world wars.
Wheatley’s modern musketeers have had an outsized influence on fiction and culture, and yet most people still do not know the name “Dennis Wheatley.” This brief article is an attempt to rectify that injustice, for Wheatley was a rarity in that he was both prolific and a master artist. His novels are fun distilled in essence, and the entire De Richleau series is worth your time. The thrills are all there, plus the moral objectivism is a refreshing change of pace from today’s typical shades of gray. These books were once hard to find, but now are readily available online. Pick up one and put on your spiritual armor. The devil is always riding out.