Lord Darcy [Mass Market Paperback]

Randall Garrett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 27, 2004

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Garrett's writing style is as elegant and charming as his setting and his mastery of atmosphere is admirable ... [Darcy's adventures] deftly combine elements of mystery, espionage, suspense, Tolkienesque fantasy, science fiction, the techno-thriller, CSI-style forensic mystery, and swashbuckling historical romance."

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 736 pages
• Publisher: Baen (January 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743471849
• ISBN-13: 978-0743471848
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,523,370 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magic and Mystery in The Empire, November 18, 2003

By 

Raul S. Reyes (San Francisco, Ca) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lord Darcy (Paperback)

I had the pleasure of knowing Randall Garrett, and he was an incurable punster. Be warned, he really cut loose in this one.
This book is fun. The protagonist, Lord Darcy, and his Forensic Sorceror, Master Sean, serve the Plantagenet Empire, which in this time-line still exists. (Richard the Lion Heart recovered from that crossbow wound and founded an empire.) Together they solve many cases of murder and espionage. The stories are clever and good mystery stories in their own right. The "gimmick" is that in this time-line magic has been developed as a science, and we get to see a forensic Sorceror apply the laws of magic to crime scene investigation. Lord Darcy then applies his deductive talent to the evidence. They make a good team.
All the Lord Darcy stories are here, from the very first one, "The Eyes Have It," to "The Napoli Express." "Too Many Magicians" is a great fun read, long enough to develope several characters and fill in a lot of the background of the Empire.
In these stories Randall threw in as many puns and allusions to spy and mystery novels and series as he could. Nero wolf and Archie Goodwin, James Bond, the Man From Uncle, The Pink Panther, they're all here, as well as many more.
Finally we have "The Spell of War" an atypical story in that it is a war story, and takes place early in Lord Darcy's life, when he is a young officer in the Imperial Army in the war of '39.
Aside from that one the dates in the stories are approximate to the date they were written. Randall gives the impression that the stories were happening at the time of writing, in a parallel universe.
Highly recommended.

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, all of the Lord Darcy stories collected, July 28, 2002

By 

W. H. Jamison, Jr. (Burien, Washington United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Lord Darcy (Paperback)

When I started reading science fiction and fantasy one of the first books I read was _Too Many Magicians_ by
Randall Garrett. Over the years I read other Lord Darcy stories that were collected in various volumes, but as time passed I lost my copies of those books. Thus, it was with great pleasure that I discovered that Baen Books had reissued all of the Lord Darcy stories, including the novel _Too Many Magicians_ in one volume.
The book is organized into three sections, the first is the Lord Darcy stories written before _Too Many Magicians_, the second section is _Too Many Magicians_ and the third is the Lord Darcy stories that were written in the 70's. Finally there is an appendix that contains the last Lord Darcy story that Garrett wrote, which details the first meeting of Lord Darcy and his sorcerer, Sean O'Lochlainn. If you like mysteries and fantasy then this book is for you.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A perfect introduction to the type, April 3, 2003

By 

Chrijeff (Scranton, PA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Lord Darcy (Paperback)

It's great to see paperback publishers bringing out "unitary editions" of OP classics for the benefit of those who were too young to know them when they first appeared (or have read their original copies to rags), and Garrett's Lord Darcy trilogy is one of the best choices this particular house could have made. In a splendidly imagined and explicated parallel/alternate 20th-Century world where magic not only works but has been officially codified and where the milieu takes off from recognized historical events (Richard Lionheart didn't die at the Siege of Chaluz in France in 1199, and his descendants went on to create the Anglo-French-speaking Angevin Empire, where physics, not sorcery, is the stuff of fairy tales--the internal-combustion engine and wired communications have never been invented, yet magic operates according to mathematical theory), Garrett seamlessly brings together sf, fantasy, espionage, and murder mystery in the adventures of Lord Darcy, Chief Investigator for the Duke of Normandy, and his friend and assistant, Master Sorcerer Sean O Lachlainn. "Too Many Magicians" is a full-length novel with elements of international intrigue lent by the machinations of Casimir IX of the Polish "quasi-empire," who, like Hitler, dreams of continental (if not world) domination, while "Murder and Magic" and "Lord Darcy Investigates" are collections of short stories originally published in various sf magazines in the '60's and '70's. Garrett (now, sadly, deceased) was obviously a student of history, and he's also a skilled and ingenious plotter who shows a real mastery of what used to be called the "locked-room mystery." Though some of his characters' explanations of how and why magic works may seem a bit tedious, your patience in reading them through will be rewarded--everything in them contributes to your understanding of Lord Darcy's reality. And he throws in some great curve balls too: while "Mechicoe" is a duchy of the Empire's New World possessions, it's still administered by a (Christianized) descendant of the Montezumas. I can think of no similar book that's as good apart from Poul Anderson's "Operation" stories. These books can truly be appreciated as examples of more than one genre and should reach a crossover audience.