"Randall Garrett - Lord Darcy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Garrett Randall)

ISBN: 0-7434-3548-6

Cover art by Gary Ruddell

First printing, July 2002

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Garrett, Randall.

Lord Darcy / by Randall Garrett, ed. and compiled by Eric Flint & Guy Gordon.
p. cm.
"A Baen Books original"тАФT.p. verso.
Contents: The eyes have itтАФA case of identityтАФThe muddle of the woadтАФToo many magiciansтАФ A
stretch of the imaginationтАФA matter of gravityтАФThe bitter endтАФThe Ipswich phialтАФThe sixteen
keysтАФThe Napoli ExpressтАФThe spell of war.
ISBN 0-7434-3548-6 (pbk.)
1. Darcy, Lord (Fictitious character)тАФFiction. 2. Richard I, King of England, 1157тАУ1199тАФFiction. 3.
Detective and mystery stories, Amercan. 4. Fantasy fiction, American. I. Flint, Eric. II. Gor- don, Guy,
1951тАУ III. Title.

PS3557.A7238 A6 2002
813'.54тАФdc21
2002018523

Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH
Printed in the United States of America



PREFACE
Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy is, without doubt, one of the best known and most popular detectives in
science fiction and fantasy. The stories are set in an alternate universe where magic works and the
Plantagenet dynasty of England never fell. (Yes, that's Richard the Lion-Hearted and the rest of the
crewтАФsay what else you will about them, the Plantagenets were the most colorful dynasty in English
history.) This volume marks the first time that all eleven stories, including the full-length novelToo Many
Magicians , have been collected between the covers of a single book.
 With the exception of "The Spell of War," which we've placed as an appendix, all the stories are
arranged in chronological order. An interesting facet of this series is that the date in the story corresponds
closely to the year it was written. Garret wanted to give you the feel that this was taking placenow тАФas
our world would be with two "minor" changes.
***

Lord Darcy's career as the Chief Investigator for the Duke of Normandy (and Special Investigator for
the High Court of Chivalry) spans a period of approximately a dozen years. The first story, "The Eyes
Have It," begins with Darcy as a well-established detective, a man in his early forties. (We are never