I stumbled over the Baker Street Irregulars: The Game is Afoot [ss] (2018) collection, in which thirteen authors offer wildly varying alternative versions of Sherlock Holmes, when searching for more criminous tales by Jonathan Maberry, one of the highlights of the C. Auguste Dupin-extending collection Beyond Rue Morgue [ss] (2013).
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Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy stories, where murder and magic mingle in an alternate-history Europe, being a closed set, I had never really thought to consider the gaps between them before now.
Continue readingA gap of six years followed Randall Garrett’s sole Lord Darcy novel Too Many Magicians (1967) before he returned to the universe. Was that time well-spent in creating another strong fusion of mystery, magic, and murder?
Continue readingMore magic, mummery, and misdirection from Randall Garrett’s alternate history Europe, and this time a bit of an impossible crime thrown in to boot. Not that he makes much of that element.
Continue readingAnother Tuesday, another Lord Darcy story, in which Randall Garrett mixes magic and detection in an alternate-history Europe.
Continue readingPerhaps two decades a go, I read some, but not all, of the Lord Darcy series of stories by Randall Garrett, in which detection is augmented with magic. And I’ve been telling people they’re good ever since. So for Tuesdays this, and another as-yet-undetermined future, month let’s take this Fantasy Masterworks volume of the complete stories — 10 shorts, and the novel Too Many Magicians (1967) — and see how they stand up.
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Mary Virginia Carey was not, it seems, scared of a little velitation in her stewardship of The Three Investigators.
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I thought that the novel Holmes on the Range (2006) by Steve Hockensmith was the first time he wrote about crime-solving cowboy Gustav ‘Old Red’ Amlingmeyer, so imagine my surprise when I discovered that some earlier short stories had featured the character first.
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Let’s take a moment to reflect on what Tony Medawar has done in recent years for GAD fans, with Wicked Spirits (2024) being the eighth collection of lost, forgotten, and so-rare-they-doubt-their-own-existence stories by GAD luminaries Medawar has edited under the …from the Library label. Whether we get any more after this or not, and I sincerely hope we do, it’s a wonderful body of work, and only the tip of an iceberg of effort he has been putting in for decades now.
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I try to keep a weather eye on modern crime fiction publications, mainly so that anything which sounds like it might contain an impossible crime can be tried out in this occasional undertaking where we all pretend that I’m only reading them so I can recommend one to TomCat. But Black Lake Manor (2022) by Guy Morpuss, well, I sort of went looking for this one…
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The Invisible Event 