The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious

by Scott Lynch

When egos clash during an assemblage of wizards, grandstanding displays of magic become a matter of murder in a witty and suspenseful short story by a New York Times bestselling author.

Curmudgeonly conjurer Shiverick joins a conclave of fellow wizards on the strangest beach in the world expecting the usual flashy outfits, hammy miracles, and predictable suspicions that his own powers are nil. After all, he’s never so much as cast a spell in public. When accusations of fraud end in a flamboyant murder, Shiverick must piece together the truth amid the chaos. An observant and logical thinker, it’s his time to shine.

Scott Lynch’s The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious is part of the Magic & Mystery collection, puzzle-box mysteries from top fantasy authors. They can be read or listened to in one enchanting sitting.

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Mystery, Audiobook, Fiction, Magic, Mystery Thriller

52 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 28, 2026

About the author

I was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on April 2, 1978, the first of three brothers.

The Lies of Locke Lamora, my first novel, was bought by Simon Spanton at Orion Books in August, 2004. Prior to that I had just about every job you usually see in this sort of author bio-- dishwasher, busboy, waiter, web designer, office manager, prep cook, and freelance writer. I trained in basic firefighting at Anoka Technical College in 2005; from 2005-2016 I served as a paid-on-call firefighter in the city of New Richmond, Wisconsin.

In 2007 The Lies of Locke Lamora was a World Fantasy Award finalist.

In 2008 I received the Sydney J. Bounds Best Newcomer Award from the British Fantasy Society.

In 2013, The Republic of Thieves was a New York Times and Times of London bestseller.

In 2025, The Lies of Locke Lamora burst back onto the USA Today bestseller list thanks to its selection as a monthly pick at Barnes & Noble.

In 2026, I was nominated for my first Hugo Award, in the novelette category, for my story "Kaiju Agonistes."

I live in Massachusetts with my wife, acclaimed SF/F writer Elizabeth Bear, and our four cats and two Icelandic horses.

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75 ⭐️

⋆ 𖤓 ⋆˚࿔ Well, this was fun! 🤩At first, I was a bit confused about what in the world was going on while the wizards met up on the beach. I felt like I missed a memo or something, but as I continued to read, everything started to make sense and was quite entertaining. The mystery itself didn't really happen until more than halfway through the story, but I would have been fine with the little mystery behind the wizard who kept himself suspicious. 😉 It did get the tiniest 🤏🏼 bit gory, but it wasn't too bad imo.

Overall, I had a good time reading this and kinda wished we knew more about the wizards because they were really cool, especially Shiverick. I liked him a lot. 😌🩵

༄ Thank you to Amazon Original Stories and NetGalley for providing the arc in exchange for an honest review! All opinions and statements are my own. ༄

──── ୨୧ ────

The Magic & Mystery Collection
#1 The Wednesday Witches Book Club
#2 Miss Gentle and The Case of the Very Flat Monk
#3 The Lion's Tusk
#4 A Labyrinth of Honeybees
#6 Battle of the Round House
#7 The Cairndale Orphan

[Ricarda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first story of this collection where I haven't read from the author before, although I've been curiously eying The Lies of Locke Lamora for years now. Maybe it was this unfamiliarity with the author that made me feel like the writing wasn't flowing well, but I was having a bit of a rough time here one way or another. The concept was great, though. It's about a conclave of peculiar and fancy wizards coming together on a lonely beach to demonstrate new spells and talk about recent discoveries. It's for the best that they only meet every few decades or so, because they also like to argue and point fingers at each other. A common thing they get riled up about is the wizard Shiverick, who is suspected to not have any magic at all. This year some wizards are going above and beyond to prove these suspicions, but as the conclave turns unexpectedly deadly, he is the one to lead the investigation. I must say that I didn't really care about the murder mystery part of the story. It started only half of the way through and until that point I was wondering if there would be any real plot in these 50 pages. Sure, it was nice to read about quirky magical characters, but this story more or less just passed by me without catching my attention.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Amazon Original Stories for providing a digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

[vaishnavi ☆ﾟ⁠.⁠* · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very silly, with a couple of charming characters. Shiverick, especially. But I might be biased because he is the main character, after all. At first I was a bit confused as to what was going on, and the language being a bit archaic and all formal did not help. But once the murder mystery started, I was having a lot more fun. Unfortunately, it still wasn't entertaining enough to make me give this a good rating :(

[Drusilla · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

This is a very unusual short story, but also amusing.
The writing style might be something only fans of the author will appreciate—it’s definitely a challenging read. There were quite a few sentences I had to read twice, since I always skim over details with my much-too-fast reading style and then have to slam on the brakes because I’m like, “Wait a minute…” … yeah, I really should start getting used to the fact that you have to take it slow with this author.
In any case, the subtle nuances in the sentences are delightful…
The plot itself, as I said, is quite amusing—with all the different characters packed into so few pages—and then there’s this little murder mystery and its resolution… I really didn’t see that one coming.

He knew himself to be disheveled. Had no notion of what it must be like to be sheveled in the first place. 😳

“by the billion flaming shit-canals of a billion diarrhetic demons, why the hells“ 😂

[Evie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was curious to pick this one up having loved Locke Lamora by this author, and I am always curious to see what an author can achieve in these little short stories.

I have to admit that this didnt charm me quite the way that Locke Lamora did, but I think that in balance, given that it is 50 pages long, the story that unfolded was relatively well done. There is no escaping that it is challenging to establish characters, a magic system, a murder mystery and to solve it in such a tiny package, and this achieved that, however, it was at the cost of any sort of depth or complexity to the plot.

I found that at times it was a little overly written and that this pulled me out of the story at times. All that being said, if you are after a short fantasy escape you can read in an hour this is a solid option.

Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC of this book for me to provide my own thoughts. Sorry that I am a bit late with this one 🙈



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[Melanie (meltotheany) · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC provided by the publisher via Netgalley

✰ the collection on amazon
✰ the collection on goodreads

a conclave of somewhat pretentious ancient wizards meet on a beach every thirteen-ish years to banter, update, and maybe prank each other. this group extra likes to question shiverick, who refuses to demonstrate any magical abilities, where the others love to show off their talents, so he finds himself constantly under scrutiny. but he starts to do the questioning, when this year’s beach party turns into a dark murder mystery!

i enjoyed this, and i loved picturing these wizards interacting and jesting with one another, but oh my gosh this was just too long. i did really like the twists this took, and i think it might have been the most successful in this collection for a mystery, too!

trigger + content warnings: drinking, smoking, explosions, gore, blood, death / murder, talk of war

blog | instagram | youtube | wishlist | spotify | amazon

♡ Magic & Mystery Amazon Collection Reviews:
➛ Miss Gentle and the Case of the Very Flat Monk by Travis Baldree
➛ The Wednesday Witches Book Club By Sarah Beth Durst
➛ The Lion’s Tusk By Robert Jackson Bennett
➛ A Labyrinth of Honeybees By Heather Fawcett
➛ The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious By Scott Lynch
➛ Battle of the Round House By Tananarive Due
➛ The Cairndale Orphan By J. M. Miro

[MagretFume · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, it did not work for me.

[aria ✧ · Rating 4 out of 5]

── 4.0✦

Scott Lynch, how I have missed your writing🥹 Love how we still have no truth on Shiverick

[Alex Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think it’s very difficult to be overly positive about such a short story, but it was great fun.

It was a little bit of an uphill struggle, but once the engine was on, we really got to firing on all cylinders.

The first portion is a little clunky, dense, and quite convoluted with a lot of vocabulary that’s intentionally meant to trip you up, and take you out of the flow. These wizards don’t care about your understanding.

But as we spend more time with the 9 of them, and their myriad hatreds and disdains of each other, we actually come to like them.

If you want a short little story about wizards. Reminiscent of some luscious Discworld short story with a bit more violence and adult-y ness, this is fun.

3.0/5.0

[Hosein · Rating 5 out of 5]

خیلی بامزه و دوست داشتنی بود. من رو یاد دوازده مرد خشمگین و شرلوک هولمز انداخت (دلیل زیادی هم ندارم براش).
به هر حال خوندن هر چیزی از اسکات لینچ این روزها غنیمته.

ترجمه‌ی این داستان رو چند روز دیگه می‌تونین بخونین. هنوز تصمیم قطعی نگرفتم کجا پخشش کنم.

[Brok3n · Rating 3 out of 5]

My review of The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious, by Scott Lynch:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Marcie Reads · Rating 2.5 out of 5]

𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝗯𝗶𝗴 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝗲. 😬

As someone who loves Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastard series, I was really looking forward to this. Unfortunately, it fell completely flat.

The writing felt more like an attempt to show off an extensive vocabulary than to tell an engaging story. Between the abundance of characters and the archaic language, I struggled to find anything genuinely interesting beneath all the elaborate prose.

And being a short story isn’t an excuse. I’ve read brilliant short stories that deliver compelling plots and memorable characters in very few pages. This just didn’t do it for me.

I know Scott Lynch is capable of so much better, which makes this all the more disappointing.

𝗣𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲, 𝗦𝗰𝗼𝘁𝘁. 𝗚𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗺𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗚𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗕𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗱. 😂

[Terence · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every 13 years, a conclave of wizards meet on a beach. One wizard in question is Shiverick. Shiverick is notable because he never demonstrates any magical ability. When a member of the conclave is slain it is up to Shiverick to solve the murder.

The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious was the first story I've read from Scott Lynch in over a decade. When I saw he wrote something I immediately decided to read it. His story the Lies of Locke Lamora was a memorable one for me and I keep an eye out for the next book in the series.

My first note about this book is it would have been helpful to have the name pronunciation guide at the beginning. To realize how to pronounce the names after finishing the story was disappointing.

The story revolves around pompous wizards and Shiverick. They like to use big words for their big ideas. They seem like the type of folk who enjoy the sound of their own voices. The mystery of the slain wizard doesn't last long, but it was reasonably satisfying. Shiverick is nothing like that though.

The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious was a nice surprise. Hopefully Scott Lynch is back to writing more now.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was exceedingly silly.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

9 wizards meet on a magical beach. Bickering ensues, accusations of fraud are thrown about, and one of them dies. Or did they?

This was a fun short take on a locked room mystery with interesting characters and strong writing. I missed Scott Lynch...

*I received a free copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

[Me, My Shelf, & I · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading the whole collection:
This is easily my favourite of the stories gathered here. I think the world and concept is the most original and interesting, the characters are the most fully* realized, and the cadence/breakdown feels the most like a traditional detective novel where the sleuth figures everything out and slowly spells out the clues and unveils their findings to the rest of the group.

*without already having hundreds of pages of existing novels to fall back on.
---------------
If not for the cumbersome and drawn-out language used, this could've been a 5/5. But as it is it was a quite amusing 4.5/5.

I quite liked the setting and the premise of these wizards meeting on the beach. The story is simple, but you still get a good idea of the long-standing feuds and rivalries, friendships and loyalties, weight and history of knowing someone -even if for just one day a year- for many centuries. It was a fun little tale unlike other stories I've read and I feel like I was able to imagine it quite vividly so it'll stick with me for a while (fondly).

The Writing:

"Vessel by vessel, the anchorage filled with the conveyances of wizards."

I don't know if Scott Lynch was recently gifted a thesaurus or entered a syllabically-centered bet, but I felt like the language used throughout was over the top to the point of annoyance. This is a personal preference for style, but I think it would've been much funnier and more readable if the effusive language was something that the wizards put on in dialogue and the narration was more or less "normal" by contrast. Perhaps even have a wizard or two drop the facade at a heightened moment for extra hilarity. As it's written I rolled my eyes and pushed through only because it's such a short story.

"Colleagues, it is agreeable to share proximity to most of you once again."

Thank you to NetGalley and Amazon Original Stories for granting me an ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[Mike Finn]

This one wasn't for me. Not my kind of humour.

To me, it felt like it was trying too hard. It had the smugness of a bore who believes he’s the smartest rather than the most tedious man in the room. A Terry Pratchett wannabe with all the appeal of an off-key Tribute Band.

I abandoned it after a few minutes.

[Chantaal · Rating 4 out of 5]

I honestly enjoyed that this story story doesn't take itself seriously at all. Just a fun little short read about some wizards and a murder in their midst. Good times.

[Carm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like with most Amazon short stories, I did the whole “immersive reading” thing. And this is a case where I should have just relied on my eyeballs. Because the audiobook narrator overacted so hard that it took me out of the story. I suspect that I would have liked this more had I passed on the audio.

[Charlie · Rating 3.75 out of 5]

Maybe 3.5. A quirky little story, this.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny little murder mystery about a group of flamboyant wizards. The audiobook reader was doing a "voice" that was . . . not my favorite.

[Genevieve (GenLikesToRead) · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5/5 stars
0/5 spice

Short-Story Review:
I may have actually enjoyed this story if it weren’t for Scott Lynch’s nearly unbearable writing style. This is my first exposure to this authors work, so I’m not sure if this is typical for him, but the wording he used throughout the story was simply obnoxious.

I’m definitely frustrated to say that I simply was never really in the story because I was too busy being baffled by the sentences that were being strung together. They were so clunky that it was wildly distracting.

Honestly, I’m not sure I can say much about the story itself because I only absorbed probably 20% of it. If this weren’t a short story, I would’ve absolutely DNF’ed it.

[Izzy⁷♡•° · Rating 2.5 out of 5]

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

Actual rating: 2.5☆

Honestly this one is the weakest of the ones I have read from the collection, a lot of characters are introduced pretty quickly and even though the mystery kept slightly on my toes, I wasn't that invested.

[katie (bard-maresh) · Rating 1 out of 5]

i’m irritated

[Huck · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a quick fantasy cozy mystery about a remote wizard conclave, a death gone wrong, and a murder gone right? We follow Shiverick, a (maybe) wizard who refuses to use magic, inciting his follow wizards to question his wizardly status. And one of them is determined to find out once and for all.

My only previous experience with Scott Lynch’s work was DNFing The Lies of Locke Lamora so I wasn’t sure how I would feel going into this story. But I was pleasantly surprised. The characters and writing are humorously pompous. In longer format it would get tiresome, but in a short story it works, and as we get further into the mystery in the second half, it drops a little of the verbosity. I enjoyed the turns the mystery took, although for a short story, the actual mystery started quite late in the game which didn’t leave much time to introduce and solve the mystery. This left me feeling it was solved too easily/quickly. I wanted more sleuthing. But also, it is a short story so that may be inevitable.

It is wholly different from the little I have read from this author before, and I enjoyed seeing his range in his writing. I think if you are reading this because you loved Scott Lynch’s other works and are looking for something similar, this is not going to land. But if you are looking for a quick, cozy mystery starring pompous wizards, this could scratch the itch.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

[Abigail McKenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh now this was delightful. another book that really said "we are using every vocabulary word we can throw at it, hope y'all brought your dictionary" and I respect it 👏

[Stephi · Rating 3 out of 5]

quite funny

[Patricija · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not great not terrible

[Diana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Magic and Mystery Collection:
Miss Gentle and the Case of the Very Flat Monk - Travis Baldree ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
The Wednesday Witches Book Club - Sarah Beth Durst ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
The Lion’s Tusk - Robert Jackson Bennett ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
A Labyrinth of Honeybees - Heather Fawcett ⭐️⭐️💫
The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious- Scott Lynch ⭐️⭐️
Battle of the Round House - Tananarive Due ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Cairndale Orphan - J.M. Miro ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[gee ☽ (IG: momoxshi) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was fun. Did not expect so many twists in just a very short one. I need more of Shiverick.