In multiple stories, D'Amour is depicted as living in the same reality as Barker's popular creations the Cenobites and the Hell Priest (widely known to fans of the Hellraiser movie franchise as Pinhead).
Due to his desire to protect not only the living but also any lost soul and spirit that suffers unjustly or is victimized, D'Amour describes himself as "a detective for the dead" in some stories.
In an interview with Fangoria, Clive Barker described Harry D'Amour as "this everyman who is drawn into the heart of darkness over and over again because of some karmic thing which he has no power over".
His antecedents are the troubled, weary and often lovelorn heroes of film noir - private detectives with an eye for a beautiful widow and an aversion to razors".
[8] While filming the adaptation Lord of Illusions, Barker considered actor Scott Bakula the perfect casting choice for Harry D'Amour.
On the documentary "The Making of Lord of Illusions" included with the director's cut of the film, Barker said: "He's the Harry I've had in my head for 8 years - no word of a lie.
[9] Later in IDW Publishing's comic book adaptation of The Great and Secret Show, artist Gabriel Rodriguez designed D'Amour to look like Bakula.
A battle ensues, resulting in multiple deaths and Mimi being lost to the "Gulfs" (a term some of Clive Barker's demons use to refer to Hell).
The novel revises Harry's history, saying he had a few encounters with magic as a child, never understanding the truth of these incidents and "secret terrors" and forcing himself to forget and deny they occurred.
According to the novel, D'Amour's first conscious realization of the supernatural occurs when he is a police officer and accidentally discovers a demon alongside his partner Sam "Scummy" Schomberg.
The Scarlet Gospels also focuses on his relationship with elderly blind medium Norma Paine, who D'Amour meets after coming to terms with the existence of the supernatural.
D'Amour also meets tattoo artist Caz King who then put sigils on the detective's body to alert him to and/or protect him from supernatural threats.
In the short story The Last Illusion in Books of Blood Volume 6, Harry D'Amour is introduced as a man in his thirties, a divorced private investigator living in New York City.
His recent case at the Lomax house on Wyckoff Street in Brooklyn has shaken his views of the world and himself, as he now knows for certain that magic and demonic forces are real.
D'Amour learns demons want to claim Swann's soul because years ago he made a deal with them, gaining real magic that he then used to become famous while pretending to only be a stage illusionist.
Set near Christmas time, this story depicts the start of his relationship with Norma Paine, a blind old woman with an inner eye granting her the ability to see beings of the spirit world across great distances.
The first to contact the detective is Jim Hotchkiss, father of Carolyn, a victim of rape at the hands of spiritually transformed rivals Richard Fletcher and Randolph Jaffe who make war with each other over control of Quiddity's power.
The second to contact him is screenwriter Tesla Bombeck, gifted near death with shamanic abilities after being touched by the same supernatural substance that transformed Jaffe and Fletcher, known as Nuncio.
He advises them, as all those affected by the lengthy destructive battle between Fletcher and Jaffe, to prepare for the coming invasion of the Cosm (Earth) from the Metacosm (the ethereal far side of Quiddity) by the enigmatic maddening darkness bent on enslaving humankind known as Iad Uroboros; his encounters with the demons of the Gulf have taught him much of similar unseen threats to the world and their agents on Earth.
In the collected edition, writer Chris Ryall confirmed the comic's design for Harry D'Amour was meant to resemble actor Scott Bakula.
[10] Clive Barker's 2015 novel The Scarlet Gospels acts as a sequel to his 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart, which introduced the Cenobites, demonic figures of Hell that obsessively pursue practicing torture and sadism on human souls.
Likewise, it only follows the Cenobite mythology established in Barker's prose work and does not acknowledge the canon of the Hellraiser film franchise or its tie-in comics.
The Cenobite known as the Hell Priest spends several years killing nearly every true magician active on Earth, stealing their great spells and talismans.
Satisfied, he now intends to find Lucifer, who abandoned his post in Hell long ago, in order to attain even greater knowledge and power.
Studios comics, the Cenobites answer to a demonic deity called Leviathan and occupy a Hell dimension that resembles a labyrinth and is dedicated to those sinners motivated by the pursuit of pleasure above all else.
In this canon, Pinhead was originally Elliott Spencer, a human native to England who joined the Cenobites after his experiences as a soldier during World War I, becoming their "Hell Priest" or "Pontifex".
D'Amour also contacts Tiffany, Kirsty's surrogate daughter and frequent enemy to the Hell Priest, and encourages her to join the Harrowers, whom he works with at times.
Studios follow-up comic book series Hellraiser: The Dark Watch, plotted and co-written by Barker, picks up a year after the Hell Priest's defeat.
Unlike most Cenobites, D'Amour is allowed to retain his personality and memories, and so he attempts to learn more about Leviathan's true plans in order to stop them.
After a case in Brooklyn involving a child's exorcism makes the news, he leaves New York City and accepts a job in Los Angeles.