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Fantasy. Fiction. Mystery. Short Stories. HTML:If King Richard the Lionheart hadn't died in 1199 and his descendants ruled the Anglo-French Empire, castles would be illuminated by lantern light and long distance conversation would be held by way of "telesin." In the world of detective Lord Darcy and his sidekick, sorcerer Sean O'Lochlainn, it is a very different looking late 20th Century. The laws of magic have developed in place of the laws of physics, but it is Lord Darcy's remarkable deductive reasoning skills that answer "whodunnit." "A Matter of Gravity" (1974) When a magically talentless count falls from a tower window in a locked room, Lord Darcy and Master Sean recreate the moment of impact to prove murder. What they uncover turns out to be both absolutely real and absolutely deadly. "The Ipswich Phial" (1976) In this political thriller, a secret agent's dead body is found on a beach with no footsteps in any direction. Love potions, beautiful Polish spies, and the disappearance of the sun itself all spin a complicated web Lord Darcy must untangle. "The Sixteen Keys" (1976) When Lord Vauxhall is found dead in his home, it isn't the idea that he's been murdered that's so shocking. It's that he appears to have aged fifty years in an hour. The explanation is rooted in a desire as old as humanity itself. "The Napoli Express" (1979) Winner of the 1980 Locus Pole Award for Best Novella, this story infuses magic and humor in Garret's homage to Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. When a murder on the Napoli Express interrupts Lord Darcy's delivery of a secret treaty, the world's safety hangs in the balance.… (more)
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At least two of the story titles are parodies of
Goodreads: Welcome to an alternate world where Richard the Lion-Heart did not die in the year 1199... where magic is a science and science is an art... where the great detective Lord Darcy and the sorcerer Sean O'Lochlainn combine occult skills and brilliant deductions to bring criminals to the King's Justice and thwart those who plot against the Realm. Welcome to a world where murder may be committed by magic most foul, but crime still does not pay - as long as Lord Darcy is on the case.
Wikipedia "Lord Darcy":... is a detective in an alternate history, created by Randall Garrett. The first stories were asserted to take place in the same year as they were published, but in a world with an alternate history that is different from our own and that is governed by the rules of magic rather than the rules of physics. Despite the magical trappings, the Lord Darcy stories play fair as whodunnits; magic is never used to "cheat" a solution, and indeed, the mundane explanation is often obscured by the leap to assume a magical cause.
Two more Lord Darcy novels, Ten Little Wizards (1988), and A Study in Sorcery (1989), were written by Garrett's friend Michael Kurland after Garrett's death.
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The strong relation between Lord Darcy and Master Sean O'Lochlainn in some ways recalls that between Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey and his servant Mervyn Bunter. In both cases there is a successful detection team composed of a nobleman and a commoner, with a built-in social hierarchy tempered by a strong and long-lasting personal friendship; in both cases, the commoner partner is an extremely capable and competent person, highly appreciated by his socially-superior noble partner; and in both cases, the partnership started as a wartime relationship between an officer and an NCO, and carried over into civilian life. Garrett's debt to Sayers and Lord Peter Wimsey perhaps strayed over the line in "A Matter Of Gravity" in which the method of murder was essentially a direct copy of the method in Sayers' "Busman's Honeymoon."
Wikipedia (2021-03-28)
Gordon Randall Phillip David Garrett (December 16, 1927 – December 31, 1987); pen names David Gordon, John Gordon, Darrel T. Langart, Alexander Blade, Richard Greer, Ivar Jorgensen, Clyde (T.) Mitchell, Leonard G. Spencer, S. M. Tenneshaw, Gerald Vance.
Goodreads added pseudonyms: Gordon Randall Garrett, Gordon Aghill, Grandal Barretton, Ralph Burke, Gordon Garrett, Blake MacKenzie, Jonathan Blake MacKenzie, Seaton Mckettrig, Mark Phillips (with Laurence Janifer), Robert Randall.
Recommended as lightweight entertainment.
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Fic SF Garrett |