Mixing genres is a risky enterprise, and the works I’ll be reviewing in this series blend mystery and science fiction/fantasy with mixed results.

1.)   RANDALL GARRETT – Lord Darcy Investigates.

Ace, paperback original; 1st printing, September 1981.

   Randall Garrett has been writing about Lord Darcy, Chief Investigator for the Duke of Normandy, since 1964. Lord Darcy investigates impossible crimes but the twist is the setting of the stories: an alternate world where magic works while science is looked upon with suspicion.

   The “magic” is actually psi powers developed by the Laws of Magic. The semi-medieval, twentieth-century civilization Garrett develops is convincing both for the primitive science the aristocratic society scorns and for the sophisticated magic most characters possess.

   The interesting point here is that Lord Darcy possesses no psi powers — for that he relies on his sorcerous assistant, Sean O’Lochlainn. Instead, Lord Darcy uses induction and deduction to pull off amazing Sherlockian solutions to the incredible puzzles Garrett presents him with.

   Lord Darcy Investigates is a collection of four novelettes: “A Matter of Gravity,” “The Ipswich Phial,” “The Sixteen Keys,” and “The Napoli Express.”

   In “A Matter of Gravity,” Lord Darcy solves a locked-room murder with a double twist ending. In “The Ipswich Phial,” Lord Darcy becomes involved in an espionage mission featuring a beautiful Polish spy, a murdered British agent, and a missing secret weapon. This is the best story in the volume.

    “The Sixteen Keys” presents the puzzle of a dead man in a house with sixteen locked doors. And “The Napoli Express” has more deception than Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.

   I highly recommend Lord Darcy Investigates and the other Lord Darcy volumes, Too Many Magicians (Doubleday, 1967; Ace 1981), a novel, and Murder and Magic (Ace, 1979, 1981), a collection of four more novelettes.

      The Lord Darcy series —

* Randall Garrett:

     Too Many Magicians (n.) Doubleday, hc, 1967.
     Murder and Magic (co) Ace, pbo, 1979.

     Lord Darcy Investigates (co) Ace, pbo, 1981.
     Lord Darcy (co) SFBC, 1983. [A omnibus edition containing all of the above plus additional short stories.]

* Michael J. Kurland:

     Ten Little Wizards (n.) Ace, pbo, 1988.

     A Study in Sorcery (n.) Ace, pbo, 1989.