Murder and Magic

Lord Darcy #1

by Randall Garrett

This Sidewise Award-winning series starring detective Lord Darcy and his sorcerer sidekick, Sean O Lochlainn, takes us into an alternate reality where Richard the Lionheart’s descendants rule the Anglo-French Empire and the laws of magic have developed in place of the laws of physics. Murder and Magic, comprised of the first four stories of the acclaimed Lord Darcy series, finds Lord Darcy solving murders using his wits, a keen eye for observation, and a few choice magic tricks. In “The Eyes Have it,” Lord Darcy must figure out who killed the taciturn playboy, the Count D’Evreux. In the political thriller “A Case of Identity,” Lord Darcy picks apart the disappearance of the Marquis of Cherbourg, especially mysterious considering the escalating cold war with Poland. Lord Darcy and Master Sean investigate a body coated in blue paint already occupying a coffin built for the late Duke of Kent in “The Muddle of the Woad.” Literary humor is at the heart of “In a Stretch of the Imagination,” where the head of an important publishing house commits suicide under suspicious circumstances.

Genres: Fantasy, Mystery, Alternate History, Detective, Fiction, Short Stories, Science Fiction

266 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published March 1, 1973

About the author

Randall Garrett's full name was Gordon Randall Phillip David Garrett. For more information about him see https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?239

He was married to Vicki Ann Heydron

His pseudonyms include: Gordon Randall Garrett, Gordon Aghill, Grandal Barretton, Alexander Blade, Ralph Burke, Gordon Garrett, David Gordon, Richard Greer, Ivar Jorgenson, Darrel T. Langart, Blake MacKenzie, Jonathan Blake MacKenzie, Seaton Mckettrig, Clyde (T.) Mitchell, Mark Phillips (with Laurence Janifer), Robert Randall, Leonard G. Spencer, S.M. Tenneshaw, Gerald Vance.

Reviews

[Mir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this is listed here as Lord Darcy #2, it is first in the collected Lord Darcy, so I read it first. From pub dates, it looks like all but the last (and weakest) story were published before the novel Too Many Magicians, so the order in the collected volume seems as correct as it could be without breaking the stories loose from the books in which they were originally published.

This book includes four stories:

The Eyes Have It
A Case of Identity
The Muddle of the Woad
A Stretch of the Imagination

The first three are fairly long and complex and could probably have been stretched into full-length novels had Garrett been that kind of guy, but no, he is profligate with his imagination, as well as being a fairly concise writer. This is fortunate in this particular case because the stories were originally published separately in periodicals so there has to be a certain amount of reiteration of the alternate history, who the characters are, how magic works, etc. Garrett handled this smoothly and briefly and it only began to irritate me a little in the third story.

Garrett is obviously inspired by Sherlock Holmes, and the setting is superficially similar to late Victorian England as far as clothes, technology, manners etc are concerned; however, the stories are specifically dated as taking place in the years they are published, in the 1960s. In this alternate history the Plantagenets still rule England, as well as an Empire which includes France, part of North America, and some other bits and pieces (but mostly not the territories that actually comprised the British Empire). My favorite stories were the middle two, when the wider political scene becomes important to the plot, rather than just being added color.

Our protagonist, Lord Darcy, is a bit too much the Platonic form of the detective -- he is brilliant, confident, observant, knows all sorts of obscure information, is physically fit and attractive, an excellent swordsman, can climb buildings and pick locks, is a wealthy nobleman and highly trusted by the royals, and never even loses his temper. I would like to see him struggle a bit more in the full-length novel, either with the case or with some sort of personal difficulty. Darcy's assistant, Sean, is saved from being a Watson by the fact that he is the one doing all the magic. Darcy is not himself a magician, which I think was a smart move on the author's part.

Overall quite fun. Undemanding but engaging.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Murder and Magic was the first collection of Garrett's Lord Darcy series. The book first appeared in 1979, though the three longest stories are reprinted from 1964 and 1965 issues of John Campbell's Analog magazine. They're Doyle-esque mysteries set on an alternate Earth in which magic works, though it must rigorously adhere to strict rules. Lord Darcy and his friend Master Penn are detectives you'd never think to have found in the nuts'n'bolts pages of Analog, but they were wonderful additions to the magazine. Darcy was the forerunner of many of the popular fantasy detective series that proliferated in later years.

[colleen the convivial curmudgeon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of four short stories starring Lord Darcy - Chief Forensic Investigator for the Duke of Normandy - set in an alternate England. Sort of has an air of Victorian kind of stories, though it's set in the 1960s.

In this world magic is very ceremonial - scientific and prescribed rituals - and Lord Darcy is helped in his cases by Master Sean O Lochlainn, an Irish sorcerer who uses said magic to help in the detecting.

The stories had a Sherlockian vibe, relying heavily of accumulating facts and data, but also with a detective who was able to see connections that others missed. But, like the Sherlock tales, I found them interesting but not riveting - perhaps because character development is a bit scarce, and Darcy doesn't have the same odd quirk and charm as the renowned detective.

I liked 'The Muddle of the Woad' the best, as it had the most intricate plot and cast of characters, and 'A Stretch of the Imagination' the least, because it was the shortest and sort of shifted the focus from Darcy's pursuit of clues and truth to him being more a sort of detective savant, which I didn't really like that much. (I also didn't like how Sean, who was a good compatriot in the other three stories, became a sort of goggle-eyed admirer.)

'The Eyes Have it' and 'A Cast of Identity' are on equal footing between the other two.

[Aslı Dağlı · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bes hikayenin ucunu cok sevip birini ortalamanin uzerinde buldugumdan, sonuncusunu ise sevmedigimden 3,5'tan 3.

[prcardi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Storyline: 2/5
Characters: 2/5
Writing Style: 3/5
World: 3/5

I'm prejudiced against both the short story format and murder mysteries, thus it was a welcome surprise to enjoy this as much as I did. The stories are obviously supposed to bring to mind Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but Randall Garrett doesn't attempt to out-Sherlock Sherlock Holmes. Instead he depicts his murders in an alternate history English empire of the 1960s where sorcery is embraced by the Church and civil administration.

The most pleasant aspect of the collection is the lack of ostentation. Our esteemed investigator Lord Darcy is competent but no savant. The magic is descriptive and detailed without relying on sensationalism. The alternate history is presented as background rather than spectacle. This is what murder mysteries would read like in a world where England really did rule the Occident and wizardry was a regular profession.

The four entries - a novelette from 1964, a novella from the same year, another novella from 1965, and a short story from 1973 - vary widely in their contribution to the Lord Darcy universe. The latest published took minutes to read, and the earliest, while longer, did not offer much by the way of plot ups and downs. The middle two were the most enjoyable, and I saw how they would have fit into magazine issues perfectly. Too often old science fiction or fantasy magazine stories are pulp. The problem with pulp is that they throw out any development and pacing so as to fit in all the action permissible in the short page limitations. This wasn't a pulp novel, and with the exception of the last short story, Garrett filled the pages with the right balance of intrigue, suspense, and world building. I have a better appreciation for magazine-era stories now for having read this.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was okay. He created an interesting world where the definitions of science and religion are intertwined with magic. However the crimes and resolutions were pretty rote. The magic wasn't all that interesting and was described in a fairly clinical way. If you're into forensics, you might like this, as he basically replaced modern forensics with magical forensics, and made it a book. The characters were essentially Sherlock and Watson, with new names, in a different time period.

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very enjoyable short story collection. a nice combination of Sherlock Holmes and CSI with magic added in. Recommended

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1199, Richard the Lionhearted died from a crossbow wound at the Seige of Chaluz, leaving his neglected English throne in the hands of his brother Prince John.

At least that's one way the story goes. But what if history had gone a little differently?

In the world of Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy, Richard the Lionhearted recovered from his wounds and settled down to the running of England and France. Without heirs of his own, Richard entrusted the kingdom over to Arthur, the capable son of his dead brother Geoffrey. Arthur made a brilliant marriage and expanded the kingdom until the Plantagenet Empire was the most powerful on the planet.

But this is also a world where the laws of magic were codified and treated as a science. Those with the Talent are trained to be sorcerers or healers, fully licensed and sanctioned by the Church. Healers perform their work through the laying on of hands, allowing people to live longer. But superstition and distrust hasn't disappeared completely from this world, creating an underworld of hedge wizards and "black magic" users that feed off the general populace's fears. These fears are also encouraged by agents abroad.

The Chief Criminal Investigator to Richard, Duke of Normandy, Lord Darcy must solve the unsolvable, while aided by Master Sean O Lochlainn. Lord Darcy is the master detective of this universe, lacking any Talent of his own, except his remarkable mind and powers of observation. Master Sean O Lochlainn is a master sorcerer with a particular interest in forensics. Lord Darcy and Master Sean work as an able team, confident in each other's special abilities.

The first Lord Darcy collection, Murder and Magic, was published in 1979, but all four stories were published earlier. Each story is what would be called "fair play" murder mysteries as all the clues are provided. Master Sean provides the bulk of the magical evidence, quick to lecture on the various magical laws and how they relate to a particular situation. Lord Darcy does his own investigating and draws his own conclusions. Very often he just needs Sean to back up his suspicions.

Rereading these stories, I was struck by several things. A reviewer commented on the religious overtones of the series and it's quite true. The Church is a strong component of everyday life in this universe. Priests and clerics appear as characters throughout the series. Only "The Muddle of the Woad" shows a glimpse of how they regard challenges to traditional Christian life with the Society of Albion with its claims to Druidic paganism. No Reformation is mentioned, but compared to say Keith Roberts' Pavane, there's also no reference to the Pope or Vatican in this first collection. All the same I could see how the religious references might feel overwhelming.

What irked me throughout the collection were the women or lack thereof, although to his credit, there were no female murder victims. But there are also no female magic users and with the Church so heavily involved, one wonders if they're even allowed to wield magic. In "Stretch of Imagination", Damoselle Barbara allows as she has "above average" Talent, but no one asks why she is never trained, so one could see her perspective cast aside as feminine intuition, nothing more. None of the stories pass the Bechdel test either; even there are multiple female characters, they don't interact with each other.

Garrett is also quite repetitive as a writer. Presumably Garrett was trying to make the stories to standalone, so he had to repeat his world's history. That meant reading about Richard's survival multiple times and he didn't vary the story all that much. He also used the same pet phrases when describing certain characters, like Lord Darcy speaking Anglo-French with an English accent or describing Master Sean as the tubby Irish sorcerer. As separate stories, it probably wasn't so bad, but taken together in one volume, the combined effect could get rather tiresome.

In his lifetime, Randall Garrett published two Lord Darcy short story collections (Murder & Magic and Lord Darcy Investigates) and one novel (Too Many Magicians). All of these stories, plus several uncollected stories, were published in one volume Lord Darcy by Baen Books in 2002. Michael Kurland also published a pair of Lord Darcy books continuing the series with Ten Little Wizards and A Study in Sorcery.

All told I still enjoyed this first collection. Lord Darcy has a certain undeniable charm and I love his interactions with Master Sean. Since it's the first series of stories, I'm willing to allow a certain leeway to see if Randall Garrett develops the universe further. This series both fascinates and frustrates me as a reader. I love the world and how it melds so well with the mystery genre. I intend to continue my Lord Darcy reading with the rest of the series, so we'll see if my misgivings are assuaged.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

In many ways, these are clever mysteries, set in an alternate timeline where Richard the Lionheart survived and passed his rule, not to his brother John, but to his nephew Arthur, somehow resulting in eight hundred years of peace and prosperity of a united Anglo-French empire (which also colonized both North and South America, respectively known as New England and New France). It's set in the then-present day (the 1960s), but a still-disunited collection of German states act as a buffer zone between the Anglo-French and the expanded Kingdom of Poland. There are firearms, but transport is still reliant on horses, and while there is some form of remote communication, it doesn't operate across water.

The book shows its age a little (not least in its attitude to the "savage" indigenous inhabitants of the Americas, mentioned in passing), and is occasionally clunky. The point of change in the timeline is conveyed in what is theoretically the viewpoint of Lord Darcy reflecting, for no particular in-story reason, on history (repeatedly so, since these were originally four separately published stories in various magazines of the day). Darcy's forensic sorcerer acts as a mouthpiece for the author's lore drops as he pedantically explains what he's doing. The fact that it's dangerous to interrupt a magician at work is mentioned once too often, especially since it has no real significance.

I could probably forgive all of this, but the mysteries were not that satisfying to me as mysteries, and it's for one simple reason: the reader has no chance of solving them. We watch Lord Darcy do his investigation, and then we witness his clever explanation of how the crime was committed, in which he reveals key facts that we did not know until then. There's some pleasure in watching people be clever, but personally I prefer to have the opportunity of being clever along with them.

The scanned text for the ebook needs a little more editing for OCR errors (see my notes), and possibly originally had minor issues with punctuation.

It could have been good, but for me was only mediocre. I won't be reading further in the series.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another four longish short stories featuring the exploits of Lord Darcy, in an alternative reality that resembles our world in some ways but which features an entirely different history.

[Randy Money · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun, engaging mix of fantasy (or s.f., if you look at sideways and with a squint) and Holmesian detective story. The collection has four stories, the weakest one the last. The others do a nice job of filling in details about a history in which Richard the Lion-Hearted survived and the empire spread to the New World without a revolution. Lord Darcy isn't as charismatic as Sherlock, and his sidekick, Master Sean, leans toward stereotype, but together they are enjoyable solving the mysteries that plague the empire and threaten the throne.

[Redsteve · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had forgotten how enjoyable these stories are. Even though they were originally published between 1964 and 1973, they aren't as simplistic as you might expect from a setting where magic is "science" and science is mostly backwards superstition and the Plantagenets still rule a rather medieval-feeling British Empire. Set in 1960s alternate history, magic is extensively codified, both through experimental method and legality (both through Church and State). The Western world is strictly Catholic (no Reformation here.). The level of "technology" seems to be maybe a Century behind - there are trains but most small-scale transport is by horse, they have (wire-connected) radio ("teleson") but no wireless or telephones, and non-magical medicine is considered ridiculous. "A person becomes ill, and instead of going to a proper Healer, he goes to a witch, who may cover a wound with moldy bread and make meaningless incantations or give a patient with heart trouble a tea brewed of foxglove or some herb which has no symbolic relationship to his trouble at all. Oh, I tell you, my lord, this sort of thing must be stamped out!" The world is actually pretty well thought out and the stories are engaging. On the other hand, the author’s attitude isn’t exactly enlightened (not surprising for SF/Fantasy written in the mid-20th Century), either towards women or towards non-Western peoples – the only Non-Europeans in the story is the occasional mention of “red savages” in New England and New France. Even the main villains are also European Catholics (agents of the King of Poland, the other major power in this series). The social structure in the Empire seems pretty caste-y, with most of the non-nobles “knowing their place.” Regardless, it’s still a fun read if you don’t dig too much into the social aspects. Lord Darcy is obviously inspired by Sherlock Holmes, but is more personable. 3.5 stars.

[Josh399]

Not much to say here. I was very unimpressed by this series. Garrett decides on a grand idea (merging the English and French empires together with magic and religion) and executes it poorly on a worldbuilding level.

I read R. A. Lafferty's 900 Grandmothers earlier this year, so I know Garrett's storytelling is not JUST dated, it's unimaginative. In such a grand setting you'd expect any and every tale to be brimming political intrigue, political theory, alternate or real history, and zaniness. Instead the reader suffers through three inane stories so stilted they felt they might've been censored by the King of the Angevin Empire himself. Lord Darcy himself is perfect in every way, except for the fact that he participates in an insane theocratic monarchy that is SO OBVIOUSLY enslaving half the world. There is really no excuse for reading it aside from marginally interesting murder mysteries and an intense focus on a "hard" magic system (which some may appreciate).

At least Lord Darcy is aromantic, so I got to fill out that square in r/fantasy bingo.

[Dj · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of Short Stories which are Mysteries that involve Magic in some way. The mysteries in the book are more of a Sherlock Holmes type than one where you as a reader are presented with the clues and allowed to come to your own conclusions as to who done it. They are also set in an Alternate Earth which is Magically Advanced but Technologically backward. The stories are interesting and have an appeal all their own. A fun if not deeply rewarding read.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF (Well, I read 2 of the four stories in here, and the fourth is quite short).

This was neither particularly good nor bad- mostly it wasn't what I wanted it to be. I was hoping for Hercule Poirot meets Fantasy. Instead, I got Sherlock Holmes meets Fantasy. The first story was tidy enough, but the second was pretty dull, and these simply weren't cases where the reader has all the clues.

YMMV, but it wasn't for me.

[Julie Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the world in this alternate history line, much along the lines of Pavane but with a much more respectful attitude toward the Church. However, I never felt that I cared about the mysteries themselves or the people in the stories. That left me with an intellectual appreciation for them but not much interest in reading more.

[Doris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoy Garrett's alternate world in which magic occupies the place of modern science. I do wish he weren't quite so cloyingly enamored of the trappings of aristrocracy, though.

[Besha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoy the premise, but Elizabeth Bear’s homages (New Amsterdam et al) are better, and do not involve the phrase “tubby little Irish sorcerer” even once.

[Bryan Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this with my local sf book club. I dimly remember people being excited about the Lord Darcy series back in the 1980s, but never read them then, although did get the basic idea.

The basic idea is that these are mystery stories, wherein a clever detective and his helpers solve murders. The trick is that they while they take place in the modern era (we're told it's the 1960s) history has taken a sideways turn. In this alternate history the House of Plantagenet still rules over an expanded Angevin Empire and magic has developed as a kind of technology. Many features of medieval life persist, including an un-Reformational Catholicism, the rigid social pyramid, and a marginal role for women.

I have to say I had a hard time getting into these stories, although they are competent. Each features an intriguing corpse, some hints of politics (the Angevins are in a cold war with a Polish kingdom), magic used in place of forensic science. Resolutions are plausible, although rely too much on information the reader doesn't know for my taste. Yet I couldn't bring myself to care about any of it. The victims and their survivors didn't elicit sympathy. Darcy is too thin and unremarkable a detective to return to, neither a great brain like Sherlock Holmes or Nero Wolfe nor much of a two-fisted American PI.

I increasingly read and reread sf with an eye towards its historical contexts, and along those lines I'm not sure what to make of the Darcy tales. Perhaps they are an escape from 1960s-era social and cultural upheaval, a flight to the past without the critical stance someone like Roberts brings to bear in his contemporary and (for me) more interesting Pavane. Readers who enjoy mentally projecting themselves into medieval life without, say, the messiness of being in the majority of humans (peasants and serfs) might have found this a fun fancy,

I'm also conscious of how we use fiction to deal with income inequality. My hypothesis is that many people, at least in the US, use stories about elites to come to terms with our own epoch's robber barons and oligarchs. If we failed to stop their rise, at least we can enjoy some nice elite figures and disdain the baddies. When Garrett wrote the Darcy stories America was much less unequal than it is now, so perhaps there was another flight of fancy there, to imagine living in such a striated society. Reading it now is a different experience.

There are allegedly some fun references in the stories. I caught one obvious one in a minor character named "James le Lein, agent of His Majesty's Secret Service." "le lein" is French for "link," hence Bond. (74) One story had several mentions of nitre in underground tunnels, which made me idly ponder a link to Poe's "Cask of Amontillado." One story's title "Muddle of the Woad" is a cute pun on the face of it, while another's, "A Stretch of the Imagination" is a little better as it refers to a material detail of the murder.

One more detail: the original cover art is lovely in a 1970s way, but far too garish and exciting for the stories. I read a JABerwocky edition, which has the strange habit of throwing in random italics, or at least wavy fonts.

[Joy Pixley · Rating 3 out of 5]

The world Garrett has built is a fun concept: an England where Richard the Lion-Hearted didn't die in 1199, but founded a lasting empire, in which magic is studied like a science, and what we'd consider science is dismissed as superstitious nonsense. This setting allows for interesting new dilemmas, and we get the nostalgia of lords and horse-drawn carriages and castles to boot. The stories all feature Lord Darcy (no relation, one presumes), a classic clever and unflappable detective, and his sidekick sorcerer, Master Sean.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book. The settings and interactions were amusing, the mysterious murders were sufficiently mysterious, and the secondary characters all gasped, made witty quips, or turned out to be dastardly on their proper cues. I especially liked the exploration of how people would use magic in everyday life, for security or food preservation, and it's fun to read something where magic is just a normal thing that some people have the "Talent" for (and study hard to learn) and others don't.

But these stories were written in the 1960s, and it shows. Garrett was sloppy about writing conventions that most contemporary writers couldn't get away with. He employed long passages of expository narrative or dialogue to describe the world he'd so carefully, lovingly built -- the political situation of the country, who is leading it, and especially, at great length, how his detailed system of magic works -- even when these things don't directly impact the story. The dialogue is sometimes painfully on-the-nose and includes plenty of extraneous exchanges (all those extra hellos and goodbyes etc.), and the misspelled, over-the-top dialects for the lower classes are painful to read. The narrative gets repetitive, even within the same story (how many times must he remind us that Sean is tubby and Irish?). Worse, some of the mysteries are solved using information the reader didn't have: at the end, the detective introduces new evidence while explaining how he solved the case. There are hints to be sure, but at least for me, the solutions mostly came out of the blue. Maybe other readers are better detectives than I, though, and caught all the hints.

That said, a day or two after finishing the book, I found myself missing the world and its characters, and would be happy to pick up another book of stories about them.

[Voirrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I decided to re-read our collected Lord Darcy books again for the first time in about 30 years.

The Lord Darcy stories are set in an alternate world whose history supposedly diverged from our own during the reign of King Richard the Lionheart, in which King John never reigned and most of western Europe and the Americas are united in an Angevin Empire whose continental possessions were never lost by that king.
Alongside the change to governments and politics, thanks to a monk from Glastonbury in the early part of this long Plantagenet monarchy, a magic-based technology has developed in place of the science of our own world, carefully monitored and licenced by the Catholic Church. So by the mid twentieth century, when the stories are set, some things simply have not been invented, whereas others have - it makes for an interesting world wherein there are some interesting murder cases for Lord Darcy, Chief investigator to the king's brother, the Duke of Normandy, to get his teeth into.

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I might be in love with Lord Darcy, although I feel I am cheating on both Sherlock Holmes and Lord Peter Wimsey. The time is the mid-1960s; the place, the Anglo-French Empire, ruled by John IV, by the Grace of God, King and Emperor of England, France, Scotland, Ireland, New England, and New France; Defender of the Faith, et cetera. Yes, it is an alternative history where the Plantagenet dynasty of England never fell and magic works! So while it is science fiction, the collection feels much like fantasy.

The four stories in this collection play fair with the reader. Magic reveals clues, just as forensic science does in our world. Lord Darcy uses his intellect, clues, and observations to ferret out the wrongdoer in each story. I thoroughly enjoyed the collection.

Highly recommended for fans of science fantasy and mystery.

[Taha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Büyü ve dedektiflik kulağa ilgi çekici gelebiliyor ama pek de öyle değil aslında. Cinayetin sebebi bir büyüyse herhangi olağanüstü bir şey olabilir ve yazar bunu istediği herhangi bir nedene bağlayabilir ve olayları çözerken yine kafadan bir büyü uydurup işin içinden çıkabilir. Bu da dedektif karakterinin zekasını sorgulamanıza ve cinayeti tahmin etme girişiminizin beyhudeliğine neden olabilir. Bu yüzden bu kitapta pek aradığımı bulamadım. Zaten bu tarz hikayelerde benim kriterlerimi Agatha Christie romanları ve Sherlock Holmes serisi belirler. Onların yükselttiği çıtaya yetişebilen pek olmadı benim için şimdiye kadar.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the Lord Darcy stories for the first time 40 years ago or so, and have recently revisited them when I found them on Amazon.

I love this world! It is alternate history combined with magic. The main character is a deductive detective roughly in the mode of Sherlock Holmes, his sidekick an eminently competent sorcerer.

The mysteries play fair - the clues are all there, although not obvious. There is a plethora of in-jokes that are only accessible to people who have read Rex Stout, Dorothy Sayers, and Agatha Christie, have a knowledge of antique silver, and play bridge. But if you miss them it doesn't spoil the story.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

A detective can always make use of a sorcerer to verify the evidence

This series has many aspects that may be of interest to many — an alternate history, a good detective, a twist in the story by involving the magic. The stories do not typically include murders committed by magic but magic comes into play in methods and verifications. Finally, add in the tried and true formula of a master detective and his companion and assistant that shows it to be an enjoyable, not quite mainstream, detective story.

[Eden · Rating 4 out of 5]

2013 bk 313. I thought I had all of the Lord Darcy books - but when this was offered through BookBub, I discovered that I didn't. These earlier stories don't have the ease of the relationship between Lord Darcy and his forensic sorcerer that the later tales do, but they are still excellent mysteries involving the supernatural. I enjoyed them, but felt a little disjointed since they weren't as well developed as the later stories. Still worth a read if you like alternative science fiction/paranormal mysteries

[Kris · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNFed after sitting around unread for almost a year, I just can't suspend my disbelief hard enough to accept the premise of the Plantagenets and 12th century Europe lasting into the 1960s. The forensic magic was interesting, I wish the practioners of that magic had been less oily and more likeable. Lord Darcy, himself, was something of a medieval James Bond, which sadly made him the only character of any depth in the book.

[Adena Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the perfect read for readers who enjoy mysteries, steampunk and alternative fantasy. Think Sherlock Holmes, only more handsome and socially adept, investigating unusual crimes for the Crown (a descendant of Richard Lionheart). This is one of the most imaginatively crafted worlds I have had the privilege of enjoying. I definitely recommend this to fans of Sherlock Holmes (A. Conan Doyle) and Henri Davenforth (Honor Raconteur).

[Gillian Wiseman · Rating 4 out of 5]

While a bit old-fashioned in style, the mystery and world-building elements of these stories are splendid. A clearcut and easy to comprehend magic system lends credence to the world; my only complaint is how "perfect" the world seems - with little description of anyone in need, poverty, or unsatisfied with their lives, it seemed rather artificially utopian. Anyway, if you like a good fantasy mystery, give these stories a try.

[Joanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. I really really like the world building. It is fresh and interesting and makes me want to be a forensic sorcerer now, cause it sounds so cool. Unfortunately, we only follow the cast as THEY unravel the mystery, we didn’t get many clues and so couldn’t have a chance at solving the mystery. This problem is made worse when this book is made of short stories. A novel to flesh out the world or give us more clues would be much more enjoyable, and I would have given it 4 stars.