Lord Darcy (fiction)

Lord Darcy is a detective in an alternate history. The first stories were asserted to take place in the same year as they were published, but in a world very different to our own.

Magic

France, Ireland, and the nations of Britain are combined into a single state as the Anglo-French Empire, whilst Russia, Italy, and Germany continue as loose collections of small states. Magic is a codified scientific discipline, much involved with higher mathematics and possessed of theoretical and experimental underpinnings as sophisticated as those of our physics and chemistry. Licensed Sorcerers, possessed of the Talent and properly trained, achieve a wide range of effects. Healing by the laying on of hands is effective and a commonplace treatment for disease and injury. The Church is powerful and a central component of everyone's life. Society is stratified — most important government positions are held by nobles, who dispense justice and still maintain private soldiers. However, serfdom is as dead as in our own world, and the rights of the common people appear to be as well protected as in our world's Western democracies.

Technology

Technology and physical sciences have suffered somewhat with the emphasis on magic. Physics has not been codified as a science; the one example of an investigator into the discipline is an eccentric on a par with the members of our own Flat Earth Society. Most mechanical devices are approximately those of our Victorian era. Characters travel by horse-drawn carriage and steam train and employ revolving pistols and bolt action rifles; buildings are illuminated with gas lights. An electric torch, with magical parts, is "a fantastic device, a secret of His Majesty's Government." Magic has replaced some technology; equivalents to the telephone and mechanical refrigeration are in use, although these are expensive and comparatively rare. Sorcery is commonly employed in murder investigations, in much the same fashion as forensic science in our own world. Medicine appears to be, at least in some regards, more effective than our own; the average lifespan has been extended to the point that sixty is considered early middle age.

International Situation

The Anglo-French Empire was established by the Plantagenets, which dynasty has continued to rule. Richard I, returned to England after being wounded, but recovered and ruled well, whilst John Lackland never held the throne and died in exile. Richard died in 1219 was succeeded by his nephew Arthur. Seven-hundred-fifty years later the present king is "John IV, by the Grace of God, King and Emperor of England, France, Scotland, Ireland the Anglo-French Empire, New England America, and New France America; Defender of the Faith, et cetera"; he is also Holy Roman Emperor, exercising loose sovereignty over the many small German and Italian states. However, his actual exercise of sovereignty is limited by the ability of German states to call upon the Poles for help; the chronoligically first Lord Darcy story (though not the first written) takes place during a miltary confrontation between Anglo-French and Polich forces on the soil of Bavaria.

Poland is a major power and the chief rival of the Anglo-French, and the two exist in a situation of Cold War; some of the stories are spy thrillers, where Lord Darcy is pitted against Polish agents and takes on some of the attributes of James Bond (with some magic ingredients added, such as a spell used to make him fall madly in love with beautiful female Polish agent). Hungary is part of the Polish Empire (the University of Buda-Pest is mentioned as one of Poland's major institutes of learning), and the empire seems to extend southwards into the Balkans. The Russias are no more than a set of fractious statelets, which might unify in the face of Polish aggression but as yet have failed to do so (it had been close to that situation in some periods of our own history). The Byzantine Empire continues to exist and is, at least at times, an Anglo-French ally, but is a minor power corresponding to our Greece. The Ottomans rule a realm beyond it, apprently never having spread beyond Anatolia. Southern Spain is still part of the Muslim world.

Since the Point of Departure which set this alternate history off is the survival of Richard the Lion Heart until 1219 and his success in eliminating the Capetians and making himself King of France, presumably in this history The Fourth Crusade of 1204 which fatally crippled the Byzantine Empire never took place. And with John Lackland never taking the throne, he never had a chance to behave tyrannically as a king, and therefore there was no rebellion culminating in the Magna Carta - which may (very partially) explain the lack of any democratic institutions in this Twentieth Century. (By which Garrett may have meant to imply that the villains of history sometimes have their uses.)

Mexico (Mexique in Anglo-French) is still ruled by Aztecs, with the Christianised descendants of Montesuma having been taken into the empire's high nobility and possesing considerable authonomy. North America (the whole continent in this world known as "New England") is in the process of being settled by Europeans, but the process is far less advanced than in our history, with Native American tribes in the 1960's still able to offer significant resistance to whites encroaching on their land. However, there is also mention of thriving tobacco plantations, which seems to indicate that the equivavlent of the US South is more thickly settled than the North. Little is mentioned of "New France" (South America) beyond a single mention of its jungles being a punitive posting to unruly soldiers, from which it is clear that native inhabintats are far from completely subdues there, either.

Lord Darcy is Chief Criminal Investigator for Prince Richard, Duke of Normandy — the brother of the king. An Englishman, he lives in Rouen, but spends very little time there. His assistant is Master Sean O'Lochlainn, a sorcerer who undertakes magical forensic work.

Allusions

As in many of Garrett's other writings, he takes every opportunity to insert subtle, or otherwise, allusions to other fiction — in these stories there are many echoes of other classic, or otherwise, detectives. For example, in Too Many Magicians there is a cameo appearance by the Marquis de London, who looks and talks like Nero Wolfe, an identification reinforced by his sidekick Lord Bontriomphe (whose name is a literal French translation of "Goodwin") and his cook Frederique Bruleur (corresponding to Wolfe's cook Fritz Brenner). More subtly, the murder victim, a famous Master Sorcerer named Sir James Zwinge, shares his name with The Amazing Randi. Darcy himself resembles Sherlock Holmes in a number of ways, though O'Lochlainn is not very much like Watson.

Despite the magical trappings, the Lord Darcy stories play fair as whodunnits; magic is never used to "cheat" a solution.

Too Many Magicians is the only Lord Darcy novel: it first appeared in Analog magazine from August to November 1966 and was issued in book form by Doubleday in 1967. This was followed by two short story collections: Murder and Magic (1979), and Lord Darcy Investigates (1981), containing stories that had appeared in Analog, Fantastic and other magazines. Garrett's extended illness and death prevented him from writing more Lord Darcy tales as he had intended.

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.

In 1999, Randall Garrett won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History Special Achievement Award for the Lord Darcy series.

Stories

Murder and Magic (1979, ISBN 0-441-54541-6) collection containing:
- "The Eyes Have It" (1964)
- "A Case of Identity" (1964)
- "The Muddle of the Woad" (1965)
- "A Stretch of the Imagination" (1973)
Too Many Magicians (1967, ISBN 0-441-81698-3) novel
Lord Darcy Investigates (1981, ISBN 0-441-49142-1) collection containing:
- "The Ipswich Phial" (1976)
- "Matter of Gravity" (1974)
- "The Napoli Express" (1979)
- "The Sixteen Keys" (1976)
Ten Little Wizards (1988, ISBN 0-441-80057-2) novel by Michael Kurland
A Study in Sorcery (1989, ISBN 0-441-79092-5) novel by Michael Kurland
Lord Darcy (2002, ISBN 0-7434-7184-9) omnibus edition containing:
- Murder and Magic (see above)
- Too Many Magicians (see above)
- Lord Darcy Investigates (see above)
- "The Bitter End" (1978)
- "The Spell of War" (1979)

External links