Literature / Lord Darcy

Fantasy/Detective series written by Randall Garrett in the 1960s and 1970s, set in an Alternate History with two major branches from our own:

1. King Richard The Lion Heart survived the crossbow wound and subsequent infection that killed him in our history, but the narrow escape caused him to reconsider his life and become a famously great monarch. Nobody ever got around to agitating for Magna Carta, and in the twentieth century the Plantagenet dynasty still rules absolutely in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and the entirety of the Americas.
2. The course of scientific discovery went down a different path, with the result that magic and psychic powers are well-understood phenomena with clearly-defined rules (but nobody knows much, or cares, about the physical sciences).

As a result, in the 1970s, the Angevin Empire's society and technology largely resemble those of, to pick a comparison entirely at random, the Sherlock Holmes stories. But with wizards.

Lord Darcy is an official investigator for His Highness the Duke of Normandy, solving mysteries too weird or too politically sensitive for the normal police to handle. He is ably assisted by Master Sorcerer Sean O Lochlainn, a one-man magical CSI department.

In the later stories, Lord Darcy and Master Sean increasingly often become entangled in the espionage and counter-espionage of their world's version of the Cold War, between the Angevin Empire and the ambitious-but-not-strong-enough-to-wage-conventional-war Kingdom of Poland.

Lord Darcy was introduced in 1964. Murder and Magic (1979) and Lord Darcy Investigates (1981) collect all of the Lord Darcy stories, bar two that were published later. Garrett also wrote one Lord Darcy novel, Too Many Magicians (1966), which fits between. A 2002 omnibus edition collects all three books and the two stray stories.

In the 1980s, following Garrett's death, his friend and fellow-author Michael Kurland wrote two more Lord Darcy novels, Ten Little Wizards (1988) and A Study in Sorcery (1989). Glen Cook named the titular protagonist in his Garrett, P.I. series after Lord Darcy's creator.

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The series provides examples of:

• Acting Unnatural: In "The Napoli Express", all of the men traveling aboard the train make themselves look incredibly suspicious through their efforts to not look suspicious. Darcy immediately dismisses the idea of them all being in a conspiracy together because they're so obviously hiding something that a real conspiracy would have already been exposed.
• Allohistorical Allusion: In one of Kurland's novels, a character views paintings of Plantagenet monarchs past and speculates about how horribly history could've gone had King Richard died sooner and the throne had passed to his Jerkass brother instead of his nephew.
• Alternate History: As discussed in the introduction, the two chief points of divergence are Richard the Lionhearted's survival of the crossbow wound that killed him in our history, and the development of magic as this universe's foundational science. Other major differences: Poland continues to be a major European power and in fact is the Angevin Empire's main rival; the Moorish Kingdom of Granada survives to the present day, as does the Byzantine Empire; the Western Hemisphere is entirely controlled by the Angevins with better outcomes for various native peoples (the Aztec ruling dynasty survives as the ducal family of Mexico, here called "Mechicoe"); and at least some African nations have retained their independence into the present day instead of being conquered by Europe (one story refers to the Ashanti kingdom having an important shipbuilding industry). The Angevin Empire itself seems to be an idealized, modernized feudal society in which the aristocratic class is motivated more by duty than by power and wealth; in "A Case of Identity", it's strongly implied that the barons — the base-level governors of the Empire — have as one of their primary duties providing what we would call "social services" for the less fortunate members of society, and that they can, and will, be called on the carpet by their superiors for failure to do so.
• Always Murder:
  • The laws of the the Empire require that every death among the nobility be investigated as a murder, even if it at first looks like a suicide. Most of the stories are obviously a case of murder from the get-go, but sometimes it is staged as a suicide.
  • Subverted in "The Sixteen Keys". Some people think it's murder, but he actually died of natural causes (...sort of). Of much bigger concern is where he hid (or dropped, or threw away...) some critically important documents while he was in the process of dying.
• America Is Still a Colony: North America is known as "New England", and is ruled by the Angevin Empire. We don't get many precise details, but we do know that there is still ongoing native resistance even though there has been successful colonization of some portions.
• A Pupil of Mine Until He Turned to Evil: Agent 055 of the Serka was once a student of Master Sean. Unlike most examples of the trope they weren't mentor/mentee, but rather Master Sean was teaching lectures at a university and 055 was one of many students in the class. Nonetheless 055 holds Master Sean in the highest regard, and Master Sean in turn remembers that they were a very good student.
• Arrowgram: At the beginning of Michael Kurland's A Study in Sorcery, a company of English soldiers are escorting a group of Native Americans through the lands of another tribe with whom they have a bad history. The chief of the local tribe sends a message arrow into the tent of the head soldier, warning him that they plan to attack and giving him a chance to withdraw his men. (History being somewhat different in this series, the message is written in formal English on mass-produced notepaper with a printed letterhead.)
• Asshole Victim: The dead nobleman in "The Eyes Have It" was widely disliked and hated and there's no shortage of potential suspects. When Darcy determines the killer was the man's sister and she'd killed him in self defense when he tried to rape her, he's content to let the matter drop while the authorities search for a woman who doesn't exist.
• Authority in Name Only: The King's power over the Angevin Empire is very real, but it's more tenuous in the German and Italian states. Despite being Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and therefore technically their sovereign, the German states are all de facto ruled by their own local nobility without any central government to speak of. The King knows that if he ever tried to use force to assert direct authority the Germans would seek aide from the Kingdom of Poland to resist him, so he lets them govern themselves and in turn they offer symbolic obeisance. The Italian states do seem to have a central authority of some sort, but it is overseen by one of their own princes as 'representative' of the king.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Several magic devices are encountered throughout the series that have great potential in ease of life or government applications, but are too laborious or expensive to make mass production or frequent use practical.
  • A preservator box (i.e. a refrigerator) is invented that could replace iceboxes, but it is so expensive that it is only seen once in the home of a Duke. The local salesman, a journeyman sorcerer, explains that they also require frequent upkeep by a journeyman like himself (and that's where he had hoped to make his money on the affair).
  • The sorcerers convention in London has a display set up by a magical company that removes all of the lint and dust from your clothing when you walk through it, and a sign boasts that one will soon be in every home in the Empire. Sean O'Lochlainn explains to Darcy that he knows it will never happen since under normal use it requires a Master Sorcerer to charge it every week, and under the present circumstances in the busy convention it needs to be recharged daily. The company only set up the display to attract attention for their other, more affordable wares.
  • A previous sorcerers convention had a viewing device that transmitted the image from a mirror suspended above the roof of the hotel. The government immediately snapped that up in the hope of using it for surveillance, but still haven't been able to make it practical since it requires three Master Sorcerers working together.
• The Baroness: Olga Polovski, Agent 055 of Serka, the Polish Secret Service, repeatedly named in-text as "The most beautiful and the most dangerous woman in Europe".
• Be as Unhelpful as Possible: The passengers aboard the Napoli Express all suspect that somebody in their party is the murderer, and in their attempts to cover for whoever it is they all manage to incriminate themselves.
• Beneath Notice: Master Sean once poses as Darcy's personal servant when they needed to pretend that Darcy wasn't officially investigating a case. Nobody thought to check if Darcy's servant was actually a Forensic Sorcerer in disguise.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Lord Vauxhall died with a gun in his hand, and Darcy considers that he may have been planning to kill himself instead of succumbing to the accelerated aging. He ultimately died before he could take the action, and Darcy cannot prove that that was his intention at all.
• Bilingual Bonus: The Sidi al-Nasir runs a gambling den in London. Lord Darcy, who speaks Arabic, notes that his name translates loosely as 'My Lord the Winner'.
• Black Magic: Performing any kind of harmful deed through magic causes irreparable mental damage of some sort, and is a crime in and of itself. It is explicitly discussed that the issue isn't what you do, but how and why. For example, a healing spell cast on a murderer's broken limb so that he can continue to commit murder is black magic, even though Healing in general is a widely practiced art.
• Blue Blood: Most of the stories involve the nobility, since the laws of the the Empire require that every death among the nobility be investigated as a murder, even if it at first looks like a suicide. Consequently the victims, witnesses, and often the perpetrators are all from the noble classes.
• Blue-Collar Warlock: Journeyman Sorcerers handle the practical, day-to-day magical work of society. One Journeyman in The Sixteen Keys is a locksmith, and despite his own higher title Master Sean says that he wouldn't want to try and break his spells without several hours to work at it.
• Breakfast in Bed: In the novella Too Many Magicians, Lord Darcy is amused to be brought caffe in bed by his Love Interest, Lady Mary, exclaiming "Ah! Capital! A Duchess for a serving wench!"
• Brilliant, but Lazy: The Marquis of London, who Darcy believes could solve any case if he ever actually bothered to get up and leave his house.
• Brainwashing for the Greater Good: Lord Seiger is a natural psychopath whose homicidal urges are suppressed by a Church-imposed geas.
• Christianity is Catholic: Literally so, as the Protestant Reformation never happened in this Verse. Although Eastern Orthodox is certainly around (in fact, in this Verse, the Byzantine Empire still exists) we don't get to really see any of it, and all the Christian clergy we see is Catholic.
• Clarke's Third Law: Inverted. There are instances of devices that work on clearly understood principles, in our world, but in the Darcy world, their sages have no idea how they work, just that they do. Examples include the teleson (a telephone), and a device created by a top secret military research program: a flashlight.
• Clear Their Name:
  • Master Sean is accused of the murder in Too Many Magicians, but it's only a ploy by the Marquis of London to get Lord Darcy to come and investigate the murder for him. Darcy deals with it swiftly instead of having it hanging over him throughout the investigation by accusing the Marquis's assistant with evidence just as flimsy as the evidence against Sean, so the Marquis lets the whole thing drop.
  • In "The Bitter End", Master Sean is accused of the murder by the bumbling Sergeant Cougair Chasseur. He has no real reason beyond his assumption that since the method of poisoning wasn't obvious, A Wizard Did It, and Sean was a wizard who happened to have been in the same pub as the deceased at the time he was discovered to be dead.
• Combat Clairvoyance: Commander Lord Ashley, in Too Many Magicians, has just a touch of magical talent that gives him the occasional burst of prescience. The most dramatic presentation of this power comes when he's fighting an opponent armed with an enchanted sword that's effectively invisible; Ashley's power lets him accurately predict the other man's movements.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: At the end of Too Many Magicians, it is revealed that the crimes were committed by an officer who was Trapped by Gambling Debts in an attempt to recruit him as a double agent under threat of speaking to his superior about it and ruining his career. Lord Darcy remarks that had the offer to recruit come a bit earlier, the officer, instead of all the crimes, would have simply told his boss the debts were a deliberate gambit to draw out the spy ring, and would have had a successful career as a double agent.
• Cramming the Coffin: In "The Muddle of the Woad", a murder victim is hidden in a coffin and is discovered when the carpenter tries to deliver the coffin to the widow of the man who it had been intended for and finds it much heavier than it was supposed to be.
• Creepy Red Herring: In "A Case of Identity", Lord Seiger is a very disturbing man who works for the missing Marquis of Cherbourg and who creeps out the Marquis's wife. He is in fact a homicidal psychopath, but a geas has been placed on him by the Church to render him safe and keep him safe from others. He is incapable of using force on others unless instructed to by his superior.At the climax of the story, Lord Seiger's controlling agent orders him to destroy all traitors, which frees him to kill the enemy agents who are holding a missing nobleman captive; however, the control forgets to "turn off" the order, which causes Seiger to kill the story's Big Bad when the latter is identified as a traitor, being fatally wounded himself while so doing.
• Cultural Posturing:
  • Sean O Lochlainn is very proud of Irish magic, and touts its superiority over all other forms. He even credits the quality of Scottish magic by saying that it descends from Irish mythological figures millennia ago.
  • Whenever the characters find themselves drinking beer, the people involved always bring up which country has the best variety. They almost always declare their own home country to be the best producer. Ironically, Sean O Lochlainn actually thinks that English beer is the best beer available, but he politely doesn't say it when he's visiting somewhere else.
• Dead Man's Chest: The woodworkers preparing to deliver the coffin of the Duke of Kent in "The Muddle of the Woad" are surprised to find that a body's already been stashed in it.
• Dead Person Impersonation:
  • In "The Muddle of the Woad". The Duchess is being blackmailed by a man claiming to be her still-living first husband, who she had thought dead, since if he was still alive it would make her marriage to the duke invalid and their children illegitimate. It is eventually revealed that her first husband is dead, and his brother is masquerading as him.
  • In Ten Little Wizards the first scene is of the impersonation, but the identity of the person being impersonated is hidden.
• Detective Mole: In Too Many Magicians, the murderer is one of the people conducting the investigation. The people he murdered had each discovered, or were about to discover, that he was deeply in debt and at risk of being subverted by the Polish Secret Service.
• Dialogue Reversal: In "The Eyes Have It", Darcy asks Sean about "the eyes" as a possible source for clues, and Sean replies "You mean the picture test, me lord?". In A Study In Sorcery, Darcy suggests "the picture test", and Sean replies, "You mean the eye test, my lord?".
• Disability Alibi: In one story, a suspect is cleared of the actual murder (if not another crime) when it's confirmed that he's not faking his paralysis, and thus could not have climbed the stairway to the murder scene.
• Elective Monarchy: Technically speaking, the monarch of the Angevin Empire only needs to be a member of the Plantagenet family, and not necessarily the current king's children or sibling in direct succession. The king's brother Richard, Duke of Normandy, does not expect to be chosen over the king's children should he die unexpectedly, but he is aware of the possibility and makes sure to comport himself appropriately.
• The Empath: Sensitives (most of them priests) can sense the state of someone's mind, discover mental illnesses and identify a person by their mental "signature".
• Enemy Mine: The Russian people historically have never unified into a single state, and for years have been at the mercy of the expanding Kingdom of Poland. After Poland conquered most of what is Ukraine and Belarus, the Russian people further east have finally banded together into a loose confederation to oppose further Polish expansion. This is what has spurred Poland to begin to expand westward and come into conflict with the Angevin Empire.
• Ensign Newbie: Lieutenant Darcy is a self-acknowledged one in "The Spell of War", learning from his Sergeant Rock.
• Everybody Did It: Proposed and then shot down in "The Napoli Express", in a fairly obvious critique of Murder on the Orient Express.
• Everyone Is a Suspect: Each story has a group of potential suspects (ranging from three to an even dozen) that have at least a theoretical motive and opportunity to have committed the murder.
• Exact Words:
  • In "The Eyes Have It", Darcy asks the family priest to divert the Countess from her guests' presence for a few minutes. The priest tells her that the steward requires her attention, and Darcy muses that, since a priest wouldn't knowingly tell a lie, he must've pre-arranged for the steward to request Her Ladyship's aid at that specific moment.
  • In "The Napoli Express", Lord Darcy is pretending to be a priest. When an investigator asks if he knows anything about criminology, he says that he has heard the confessions of criminals many times.
  • Kurland's A Study In Sorcery:
    • The Angevin governor of New England guarantees his agents' loyalty with a magically-reinforced oath, by which they swear to be loyal servants to their sovereign and his appointed proxies. Unfortunately, the oath's wording neglects to name the sovereign to be served, to save having to reconstruct the spell every time a new king takes the throne, which means a Polish spy can take the oath without consequence by staying loyal to Poland's monarch.
    • Also an issue with Pyramid Island's avoidance spell, which was designed to repel anyone without a legitimate purpose in coming there. Turns out that the gun-runners honestly believed that smuggling weapons on and off the island was a "legitimate" purpose.
• Eye Remember: Used in an attempt to discover the murderer's identity in "The Eyes Have It", even though it is noted that the evidence won't be admissible in court. It turns out that the image retrieved is the victim's subjective view of the murderer, which doesn't really look anything like her. This is a known aspect of the technique, which is precisely why it is not regarded as valid evidence.
• Faking the Dead: In Michael Kurland's A Study in Sorcery, an attempt on Lord Darcy's life apparently succeeds, but it's actually a ruse to draw the murderer out of hiding.
• Fantastic Catholicism: Most priests have magical abilities - Healing, Sensing, or, in some cases, both.
• A Foggy Day in London Town: An important plot sequence in Too Many Magicians happens during a pea-soup foggy London night. It's also stated that psychics can foresee when fog will be present and disperse, and their predictions are part of the newspaper weather report.
• Functional Magic: More functional than science, as it basically supplants it in this universe.
• Funetik Aksent:
  • Anglo-French is the court language of the Empire, but low-class characters grow up speaking local patois and are described as having accents when speaking Anglo-French. For those with the strongest accents, their dialogue is presented phonetically.
  • Polish characters who aren't trying to disguise themselves as Angevin subjects tend to have this.
• Geas: One of the characters is a psychopath with murderous tendencies, and thus had a geas put on him that makes him incapable of harming anyone unless he's given a specific code word by his superior. Self-defense is not an included option, since a psychopath may interpret a simple slap as something justifying a murder. It's mentioned that geas are often used to "treat" people with dangerous mental conditions.
• Gentleman Wizard: Several minor characters (including a couple of victims). Recurring character Lord John Quetzal is an interesting case, as he's a nobleman and a gentleman, but he's from the colonies (Mexico, in our version of reality), which gives him some interesting quirks.
• Glamour:
  • A non-magical version occurs is "The Eyes Have It" when it's revealed that the image extracted from a dead man's eyes isn't what he saw, it's what he perceived. Once he knows this, Darcy realizes that the killer, an impossibly beautiful woman seen in that image, doesn't exist. It's how the dead man pictured his sister in his mind, and she killed him in self-defense when he attempted to sexually assault her.
  • Darcy deduces that he has been put under a love spell when he finds himself instantly in love with a woman he just met. Knowing it's an artificial infatuation doesn't make it go away, but it does let him control what information he gives out until he can get to Master Sean to have it undone.
• Glamour Failure: Spells such as illusion stop being effective when one looks into a mirror, as the spell acts on the mind of others rather than the environment, and thus an illusory object won't have a reflection.
• Great Detective: Both Darcy himself and his cousin the Marquis of London.
• Hand of Glory: Lord Darcy finds one in "The Eyes Have It". Simply possessing it is a crime and proof of Black Magic.
• Honey Trap: A standard technique of the Serka to gain information from officers and politicians of the Empire.
  • Agent 055 cast a love spell on Darcy himself, and apparently also had a relationship with Lord Vauxhall. Lord Darcy thinks that Vauxhall knew who she was all along (or at least hopes that he did).
  • A sideplot in "The Napoli Express" involves several naval officers attending the funeral of their former captain, who was forced to resign three years ago after it was discovered that his mistress was a Serka operative. A few of them said that they knew there was something wrong with her from the beginning, even before they actually knew she was a spy.
• Hot Gypsy Woman: Agent 055 of the Serka poses as a Romany damsel to seduce Darcy and pump him for information.
• Impersonation-Exclusive Character: In Ten Little Wizards, the first scene is of a character's murder so that they can be impersonated. It's not until the climax that we find out who the assassin was impersonating.
• Infodump: Because the stories were originally published separately, the exposition about Richard the Lionheart surviving and magic being developed gets repeated over and over again in every story. The 2002 omnibus edition removes most of the repeated sections.
• Intrinsic Vow: The King's Messengers all take one to never reveal an official message to anyone but the intended recipient. It's backed up by a magical compulsion to die rather then reveal it.
• Istanbul (Not Constantinople):
  • North America is known as New England, and South America is known as New France. Some territories have similar names with minor spelling differences since they are named after the same indigenous peoples, while others have completely different names given by the Empire.
  • Almost all European cities are spelt or pronounced differently, due to being conquered and ruled by different polities.
  • "Roumeleia" ("Land of the Romans") is the name for the still-existing descendant of the Eastern Roman Empire. Constantinople remains their capital city.
• It Will Never Catch On: In one story, a wizard speaks disparagingly of a folk superstition that wounds can be treated with a kind of mould. In another, a man engaged in chemical research is regarded as a time-wasting eccentric (although Darcy, at least, thinks he's on to something).
• The Klutz: Because magic is impossible to use for direct aggression without veering into Black Magic, it has played very little part in warfare; however, it is ethically permissible to use magic to interfere with the actions of another to prevent harm. The plot of Too Many Magicians turns on the invention of a device that weaponizes this effect by inducing catastrophic physical clumsiness in anyone attempting to load or fire a ranged weapon (Lord Darcy himself takes nearly ten minutes to load a pistol when serving as a test subject, constantly fumbling and dropping both bullet and pistol, and misses his target completely when he finally does shoot — and he is still praised for doing better on the test than literally anybody else; no other test subject was ever even able to finish loading a gun). The effects are magnified tenfold when disrupting a team such as a naval gunnery squad, allowing the weapon to render Polish naval vessels completely ineffective — as long as the Angevins have it and the Polish don't.
• The Laws of Magic: The series could practically serve as a textbook on the subject.
• Locked Room Mystery: At least half the series. Notably, in spite of the obvious temptation, the answer is never "A Wizard Did It" (Though in one case a wizard tried to do it, but failed because someone else did it first).
• Magic A Is Magic A: Magic is so systematized that performing a particular spell will always have the same result.
• Magic Compass:
  • In one story, Master Sean enchanted a splinter left behind by a murder weapon and used it to find the rest of the weapon.
  • "The Ipswich Phial" has Master Sean give Lord Darcy a "tracker", a piece of wood broken and enchanted so that the holder of one piece can tell where the other is.
  • Another character has this as one of his magical abilities—once he locks onto someone, he can tell which direction and roughly how far (up to a certain range) the target is from his location.
• Magic Wand: A different sort for practically every spell Sean O Lochlainn carries out, of various colors, materials, sizes and decorations.
• Miming the Cues: In "The Napoli Express", a murder is committed while Lord Darcy is undercover, leaving him unable to take official charge of the investigation. While another detective leads the investigation with Master Sean's assistance, Lord Darcy uses hand-signals to prompt Master Sean to suggest "what Lord Darcy would do next if he were here".
• Mind over Manners: The priests, especially Sensitives, often refuse to dig through someone's mind without a really good reason because of their work ethic.
• Modern Mayincatec Empire:
  • Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin's descendants now rule "Mechicoe" as noblemen of the Angevin Empire. Netsualcoyotle is Duke of Mechicoe in the 1960s, and his son John Quetzal is studying to be a Sorcerer in London.
  • Michael Kurland's A Study in Sorcery, being set largely in North America, is much more specific, and adds that part of the Aztec Empire continues unabated farther south.
• Mr. Exposition: Master Sean, who's a teacher when he's not helping bust criminals, has a tendency to accompany every forensic test he does with an explanatory lecture. Lord Darcy encourages him, even when he's seen this test done before, because the lecture is never exactly same, so there's always a chance to learn something. This habit of Sean's is justified by explaining that he was formerly employed as a university professor in the subject, so he's gotten in the habit of explaining what he's doing to the audience every time he does it. It's also mentioned that doing so helps him maintain his focus on the task.
• Muggle with a Degree in Magic: Sir Thomas Leseaux, who has no magical ability, but is the world's leading expert in creating new spells due to his knowledge of magical theory.
• The Neidermeyer: The commander of Darcy's unit in "The Spell of War". His sergeant confides in Lieutenant Darcy that he is known as a glory seeker.
• Never Suicide: One of the cases that Darcy investigates initially looks like a suicide-by-hanging, but he quickly determines that it was a murder staged as a suicide.
• Noodle Incident: In "Too Many Magicians", a few of Darcy's unseen cases are mentioned in passing, but nothing more is revealed about them. Similarly, at least one case mentioned by a Fan Boy in "Ten Little Wizards" is not covered in the extant stories.
• Obfuscating Disability: John Peabody walks with a fake limp, which Master Sean figures out after watching him rush to catch a train since a real limp does not become more or less pronounced when a person is in a hurry. Sean and Darcy both agree that the limp was an excuse to carry a Sword Cane.
• Obfuscating Postmortem Wounds: Played with in A Study In Sorcery, in which a body is found in an Aztec pyramid with its heart cut out. Investigators posit that this was done after the victim's murder, so as to cast blame on a hypothetical Aztec cult. It turns out the killer was European, and cut out the heart to retrieve a bullet that would have incriminated him specifically.
• Obviously Evil: It is explained that Black Magic is a matter of symbology and intent instead of different techniques. To cast the same spell in black magic as you would in white magic requires grotesque sacrifices, malevolent equipment, etc. Just possessing some of these supplies is a crime, and an instant indicator of evilness.
• Origins Episode: "The Spell of War", one of the last-published stories, recounts the first meeting of Lord Darcy and Master Sean on a battlefield during their world's equivalent of World War II.
• Only One Name: Lord Darcy's given name is never revealed. In "The Spell of War", where he's not yet inherited his title, he's referred to as "Lieutenant Darcy".
• Orientalism: The Sidi al-Nasir, a Muslim from Granada, runs a gambling den in London. It is filled with exaggerated Muslim and Arab iconography that is tacky and meaningless, since that is what Londoners expect it to look like. Darcy, who has actually traveled to at least some of the regions of the Muslim world, instantly recognizes that the Sidi al-Nasir is playing the part to dupe his customers.
• Orient Express: "Murder on the Napoli Express" is set on the Angevin Empire's counterpart to the famous train.
• Palate Propping: Master Sean detects a sorcerous booby-trap on Laird Duncan's traveling trunk in "The Eyes Have It", and blocks its lid from severing his hand when he reaches inside it with this method.
• Paranormal Gambling Advantage: Too Many Magicians has a character Trapped by Gambling Debts after attempting to use his limited prescience to cheat in a casino. It gave him some edge, just not enough when an actual wizard with telekinesis was sitting in the next room.
• Perception Filter: The avoidance spell makes people subconsciouly avoid looking at or noticing anything it's cast upon, serving as a more effective version of an invisibility spell (which is discussed and then discarded as not helping with sounds or smells).
• Phone-In Detective: The Marquis of London (an Expy of Nero Wolfe).
• Point of Divergence: Richard the Lionheart's survival in 1199 is where things split apart. His benevolent and competent rule is followed by his nephew Arthur, whose reign is regarded as such a Golden Age that it is sometimes conflated with the mythical King Arthur. The tradition established by these two monarchs is a major factor in the survival of the modernized feudal society depicted in the stories.
• Poirot Speak: Played with in "The Bitter End", which is set in Paris and features the alternate universe version of Inspector Clouseau.
• Police Are Useless: Not normally the case (the police are the main characters), but in "The Bitter End", Sean finds himself held as a possible suspect in a murder by the incompetent Sergeant Cougair Chasseur for no reason beyond the fact that since the method of murder wasn't obvious, a wizard must have done it (which later turns out not to have been the case), and Sean happened to be a wizard who coincidentally was in the same pub as the deceased when he was discovered to be dead.
• Richard Nixon, the Used Car Salesman: In a world where the automobile was never invented, Ferrari of Milan is a noted manufacturer of firearms.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Captain Rimbaud in "The Spell of War" planned to have his men charge the Polish troops before their artillery could shell the ravine, rather than retreat and report the field pieces' position as Darcy suggests. Rimbaud was merely determined not to fall back because he considered it cowardly, but given that the Polish troops were illusions, it would've actually been the correct tactic under the circumstances.
• Royal "We": King John IV uses this when speaking as King-Emperor and drops it on those rare occasions where he needs to speak man to man.
• Saintly Church: Magic makes it possible to ensure that only suitable people become priests, so every priest encountered is well-meaning, comforting, and kind.
• Secret-Keeper: In A Study In Sorcery, Darcy and Sean are entrusted with the Gemini Secret of long-distance communication between the Old and New World, which is particularly important because the "teleson", the main method of long-distance communication, cannot cross bodies of water, a very important state asset which they swear never to reveal.
• Secret Test: A children's puzzle-toy displayed at the sorcerers' convention in Too Many Magicians also serves as a test for magical ability. If a child is Talented, their own gift will keep the toy operational even after its built-in enchantment has expired.
• Serial Killings, Specific Target: The ultimate target in Ten Little Wizards.
• Side Bet: Sean and Journeyman Sorcerer Torquin Scoll apparently have a history of wagering how long it would take for Sean to crack one of Torquin's lock spells. Despite only being a Journeyman working against a Master, Torquin has apparently won so many of these contests that Sean now refuses to bet against him again, not even when Torquin offers to give him the key that fits the lock and two hours to work on it.
• Slipping a Mickey: Master Sean sees that the barman aboard the Napoli Express is surreptitiously putting alcohol in the caffe of a patron who is trying to hide his drinking from his friends. The murderer likewise spiked Peabody's drink with a sleeping potion so that he would be unconscious that evening. Seeing how easy it was earlier in the day is one of the reasons Sean and Darcy think of it.
• Smoking Gun Control: A character once comments that detective work in cities would be a lot easier without all the anti-scrying spells placed on homes and businesses. Darcy comments that if these were not there, detective work would be non-existent—you could just call in a journeyman sorcerer to use some basic divination spells and the case would be solved in under an hour. He also mentions that this would also eliminate all hope of personal privacy, as any interested mage could scry into your house or office whenever they wanted (this being the reason that anti-scrying spells are placed on homes and businesses in the first place).
• Spell Construction: Although magic is limited to those with the Talent, actually casting a spell requires intricate and specific ingredients and actions.
• The Stars Are Going Out: In "The Ipswich Phial", a top-secret magical effect makes Father Lyon think this has happened, by causing a sort of hysterical blindness in a localized area.
• Stealth Pun: The infamous subplot in Too Many Magicians involving the uncle from the Isle of Man.
• Succession Crisis: Played for laughs when discussing a treaty between the Angevin Empire and Roumeleia, since both of them claim to be the successors of the Roman Empire (The Basileus of Roumeleia as a direct continuation of the Roman Emperors, and the King as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire). Richard, Duke of Normandy, takes advantage of his prerogative as the King's brother to point out that the claims of a Greek in Constantinople are just as valid as a bastardized Viking in London. This statement briefly outrages one of his listeners until he realizes, to his chagrin, that it's Self-Deprecation on the part of the Duke.
• Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: A key element to the whole series. Magic has been analyzed to the point it can be taught as an university topic and has clear laws that are so obvious and rigid, "regular" science (which doesn't adhere to stuff like Law of Similariy or Law of Relevance) is considered obviously false.
• Summation Gathering: Most notably in Too Many Magicians, but also in several of the other stories.
• Sword Cane: In "The Napoli Express", a sword cane (and the fact that it wasn't used) provides a vital clue in solving the murder.
• That Old-Time Prescription: The series occasionally shows that medical science dead-ended once magic turned out to be easier by having somebody refer to "superstitious folk remedies" such as treating wounds with mould or using foxglove extract to treat heart trouble. Surgeons (here called "chirugeons"), while respected - the M.D. (Doctor of Medicine) degree exists in this universe - are considered to be basically technicians in contrast to Healers.
• This Is Your Brain on Evil: The use of Black Magic always corrupts the user. Always. That is why it is illegal in all circumstances, and not even used by the military. Several characters remark that the use of Black Magic is in fact apt to drive its users insane.
• Thriller on the Express: The Napoli Express, being a homage to Murder on the Orient Express.
• Trapped by Gambling Debts: A standard ploy by the Polish spies in London is to force English officers deep into debt and force them to pass along information under threat of being exposed to their superior officers. Commander Lord Ashley was so desperate to avoid appearing at risk that he tried to pretend to sell info to Poland to get the money to cover his debt. Unfortunately for him, the 'Polish spy' he tried to sell fake info to happened to be a double agent who was actually working for his own superiors, so he was about to be exposed as an actual spy and had to resort to murder.
• Try to Fit That on a Business Card: The King's official titles:
  "John IV, by the Grace of God, King and Emperor of England, France, Scotland, Ireland, New England and New France, King of the Romans and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Defender of the Faith." That's the short version. The long one includes a bunch of knightly orders and additional Alternate Universe name-drops (e.g. Supreme Chief of the Moqtessumid Clan).
• Tuckerization: Michael Kurland gets name-checked several times in various stories, and the greatest wizards of the Angevin Empire include Sir Lyon Gandolphus Grey (L. Sprague de Camp by way of J. R. R. Tolkien), Sir Edward Elmer (E. E. "Doc" Smith), and Sir James Zwinge (Randall James Zwinge, aka The Amazing Randi).
• Twin Telepathy: A minor plot point in Michael Kurland's A Study in Sorcery.
• Uncoffee: Referred to instead as "caffe". One reference in Ten Little Wizards indirectly implies it may actually be hot chocolate, not coffee.
• Unfriendly Fire: In "The Spell of War", Darcy, a young officer at the time, chooses not to notice that the commander of his unit—who'd been a tyrant and endangered the men—had a low-angle bullet entry wound from a pistol... received while under fire from a sniper who was using a rifle from a high angle. (The soldier who killed him died almost immediately afterward, while the one piece of evidence—the body—is destroyed in an artillery barrage; Darcy chooses to protect the soldier's reputation.)
• Unreliable Narrator: The opening of Too Many Magicians has the close third-person thoughts of Commander Lord Ashley noting that he couldn't see any evidence to indicate who might have committed the murder. At the end of the novel, it is revealed he had been checking to make sure he hadn't left any behind.
• Utility Magic: Most spells have fairly Mundane Utility. The one Master Sean uses most commonly is a preservation spell, whose primary purpose is to keep the body from decomposing, but is also applied in this world's equivalent of fridges. Securing homes and businesses is another important everyday use of magic, and the magicians specializing in it are this universe's equivalent of locksmiths.
• Villain Respect: Agent 055 of the Serka, despite being a skilled sorcerer, knows better than to try to tangle with Master Sean. The Serka's entire plan in "The Ipswich Phial" revolves around avoiding him completely.
• Who Murdered the Asshole: Count D'Evreux, the victim in "The Eyes Have It", has many personality flaws. The underling who finds his body says outright that he'd always expected the Count to wind up being done in by somebody. The Duke of Normandy, upon being informed of the murder, remarks in his report to his brother the King that he's certain that the Count, being "a lecher and a slob", deserved whatever he got.
  Marquis of Rouen: If Your Highness is looking for motive, I fear there is a superabundance of persons with motive.
• World of Pun: Not at the pun-per-paragraph extreme, but the series definitely keeps the punometer ticking away. Especially when it comes to the literary shout-outs, which are often veiled behind the French equivalent of Canis Latinicus, as with master-spy James le Lien.^note "lien" = "bond"
• You Are in Command Now: Happens to both Darcy and Sean in "The Spell Of War".

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