In an alternate history in which the Plantagenets still rule in England, France, and the New World, and where the science of magic has displaced the magic of science, Lord Darcy is the official representative of King John IV to investigate murders and other bizarre crimes, and Master Sean O Lochlainn his forensic magician sidekick. An Azteque prince is sacrificed at the top of an abandoned Azteque pyramid in New England, his heart torn from his chest in a fashion discarded hundreds of years earlier. Unless Darcy and Sean can uncover the how and why of the crime, the fragile peace between the Angevin settlers of New England and the Azteque Empire may soon be broken. Another first-class authorized continuation of the magical detective series begun by the late Randall Garrett.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
A plump, middle-aged man with greying hair and mild, hazel eyes looking out from behind wire-rim glasses, Author Michael Kurland has the perpetually nervous look of a rabbit invited to lunch at the Lions' Club. He has been a teacher of obscure subjects to disinterested children, the editor of a magazine even more idiosyncratic than himself, a seeker of absent persons, a magical explainer, and guest lecturer at numerous unrelated events. But he has never wandered far from his chosen profession of scrivener for very long, since he finds the fawning idolatry of his fans a useful counterbalance to the disinterest of landlords and the disapproval of bank managers.
In Kurland's over 30 books he has romped through a variety of fields. His non-fiction works cover topics as diverse as forensic science, criminal law, espionage, amateur radio, and the history of crime in America, and have been selections of the Military Book Club, the Readers' Digest Book Club, the Junior Literary Guild, and the Writers' Digest Book Club, among others.
Kurland has written a dozen or so science fiction and fantasy novels, notably "Ten little Wizards" and "A Study in Sorcery," set in Randall Garrett's Angevin Empire, and "The Unicorn Girl," which was nominated for a Hugo. He now mainly writes mysteries, including "The Infernal Device," the first of (currently) five Professor Moriarty novels, which was nominated for both an Edgar and an American Book award, and "Too Soon Dead" and "The Girls in the High-Heeled Shoes," set in the 1930s and chronicling the mystery-solving talents of Alexander Brass, a columnist for the New York World. A couple of his books, notably "The Last President," and "Button Bright" fit tenuously into that nondescript category known as "mainstream."
The next Moriarty novel, tentatively titled "Who Thinks Evil," is in the works.
