The Lord Darcy stories have many shout-outs to other works of detective and espionage fiction. Often, with the excuse of the series's France-dominated setting, familiar names are hidden behind the French equivalent of Canis Latinicus.
Sherlock Holmes
- Lord Darcy's deductive technique, along with a sidekick who's something like a doctor and the series's vaguely Victorian-era tech level, are reminiscent of the Sherlock Holmes stories. The series doesn't, however, contain any characters who are direct equivalents (at least in the stories penned by Garrett himself, who stuck to cameos by detectives contemporary with the stories 1960s-70s time period).
- "A Case of Identity", the second Lord Darcy story, shares a title with the third Sherlock Holmes short story, although the mysteries in the two stories are widely different.
- In "Matter of Gravity", the local policeman suggests that the victim was attacked by a demon or fire elemental; Master Sean soon disproves the hypothesis, and it seems to have been thrown in largely as an excuse to have somebody say "Elemental, my dear Doctor".
- Too Many Magicians has this exchange, which is nearly identical to the "dog in the night-time" one from "Silver Blaze":"I should like to call your attention to the peculiar condition of that knife."
Master Sean frowned. "But... there was nothing peculiar about the condition of that knife."
"Precisely. That was the peculiar condition." - Michael Kurland's Lord Darcy novel A Study in Sorcery throws in a few more Holmes references, starting with the title and including Irene Eagleson, an American opera singer with an adventurous past.
Others
- Several stories feature a secret agent named Sir James le Lien (Lien = Contract = Bond).
- "The Ipswich Phial", the story that starts the series' transition into espionage drama, is a shout-out to The Ipcress File. Its villain, Olga Polovski of the Serka, is a shout-out to the song "Olga Pulloffski, the Beautiful Spy
".- James Le Lien lampshades his shout-out in this story as he gripes that Darcy got to sleep with the beautiful enemy spy and save the day (in the best Bond style) while he didn't get to do anything.
- Also Serka is pronounced similarly to the Polish word "Cyrk", meaning "Circus", and is a shout out to the agency known as the Circus in the works of John le Carré
- Too Many Magicians features a sustained shout-out to the Nero Wolfe novels by Rex Stout. The Marquis of London is clearly modelled after Wolfe, from physical appearance to his refusal to talk business over a meal. His assistant, Lord Bontriomphe, is an even clearer reference to Wolfe's assistant Archie Goodwin (Bon =Good, Triomphe =victory, win). Their chef is named Frederique (Fritz Brenner) and the senior police officer is Chief Master-at-Arms Grayme (Inspector Cramer). The title itself is a reference to three Wolfe novels with the Too Many X format.
- In the same book the symbol of the King's Messengers is a lens of grey glass, which glows in the hand of the right man, created by the great magician Sir Edward Elmer; a shout-out to E. E. "Doc" Smith and the Lensman books.
- And there's a character called Tia Einzig, a defector from the Polish Hegemony whose Uncle Neapeler escaped with the help of a Manxman named Colin MacDavid and is now living on the Isle. "Einzig" is German for "only", so Neapeler Einzig, the uncle from Man, has a name that translates as Napoleon Solo, while MacDavid's name is a simple rearrangement of David McCallum (The actor who played Ilya Kuryakin).
- "The Napoli Express" is a clear parody of Murder on the Orient Express, in which a Hercule Poirot Expy comes to completely the wrong solution (but the same one Agatha Christie used), while Darcy comes up with the real solution undercover as an unassuming priest named Father Brun.
- At one point in "The Napoli Express" a character passes the time by reading an adventure novel titled The Infernal Device.
- In "The Bitter End", Lord Darcy's investigation is hampered by an enthusiastic but incompetent Parisian police detective with such strong Poirot Speak that it comes through even though everyone in the story is theoretically speaking French, Sergeant Cougair Chasseur (Literally, "Cougar Hunter").
- Michael Kurland's novel Ten Little Wizards invokes the earlier titles of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, and uses a similar plot to misdirect away from the Serial Killings, Specific Target.
- Although the game of Bridge does not appear itself in any of the stories, there are a couple of shout-outs to bidding systems/conventions — "the Kaplan-Sheinwold test", used to determine if a "short club" was used as a weaponnote , and "the Jacoby transfer method", said to require two living hearts.note
