2/14/18

Murder and Magic: "A Stretch of the Imagination" (1973) by Randall Garrett

Last week, a positive review of Randall Garrett's Too Many Magicians (1967) appeared on Mysteries Ahoy, which was voted by a 1981 panel, spearheaded by Edward D. Hoch, as one of the fourteen all-time greatest impossible crime novels, but personally, I thoroughly detest the infernal book – giving it spot on my 2014 list of "Least Favorite Locked Room Mysteries." So, naturally, I was balking in the comment-section how awful the book really was when "JJ," of The Invisible Event, dropped by with an astonishing claim.

According to JJ, the short stories in the Lord Darcy series are "variable" in quality, but the one where "a man is found hanged in his office," despite no-one having gone in, contains "a trick so devious" he'd probably put it in his top 20 locked room short stories. I happened to have a complete omnibus edition of Garrett's Lord Darcy collecting dust on my shelves, which made it even more tempting to give this series a second shot by taking a look at "A Stretch of the Imagination."

So damn you, JJ, for making me return to this series and I'll damn you again at the end of this review, if the story turns out to be really good.

First of all, an introduction of the series in order for the people who are not familiar with Garrett's Lord Darcy, because the books merged the fantasy genre with the traditional detective story. And as much as I dislike the sole novel in this series, Too Many Magicians, I do admire Garrett's attempt to transplant the fair play concept of the classical detective story to a world rife with wizards, spells and the black arts – which makes for an interesting alternative universe.

In this alternative universe "Richard the Lion-Hearted did not die in the year 1199," but went on "to found the mightiest and most stable empire in history" where "the laws of Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP) have been codified." However, the laws of physics remain unsuspected. So in this world "magic is a science."

The greatest detective of this Anglo-Franco Empire is Lord Darcy, Chief Criminal Investigator for His Royal Highness, Richard, Duke of Normandy and Officer of the King's Justice, John IV, King and Emperor of England, France, Scotland, Ireland, New England and New France, King of the Romans and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Imagine the printing costs of his personal calling cards!

Lord Darcy is assisted by Master Sean O Lochlainn, Chief Forensic Sorcerer, who always struck me as a convenient plot-device to eliminate the use of magic from the list of possible solutions or use his magic wand to uncover clues. 

The story JJ spoke so highly of is "A Stretch of the Imagination," originally published in Of Men and Malice in 1973 and collected in Garrett's Murder and Magic (1979), which takes place within the walls of one of the most important publishing houses in Normandy, Mayard House, where staff members heard a thump and noises through the thick doors of the private-office of Lord Arlen – who owns the publishing house. However, nobody dares to enter the office until the Chief Editor, Sir Stefan, takes the charge and enters the private sanctum of his boss.

Lord Arlen was hanging by his neck from a rope that been thrown over a massive wooden beam and below his feet was an overturned chair. Nobody had entered, or left, the office in over an hour. So clearly a case of suicide, but, whenever a member of the aristocracy dies violently, an Officer of the King's Justice has to make a formal inquiry. Enter Lord Darcy and Master O Lochlainn.

Master O Lochlainn is waving "a small golden wand" around the crime-scene and senses that "there was no one else in the room at the time he died." He was also able to eliminate the possibility of an evil influence or the use of black magic in the room. Later on in the story, O Lochlainn casts a spell on the rope used to hang Lord Arlen and it sprung to life to retie itself in the slip-knot noose that the murderer had originally tied. I know wizardry is an established science in this universe and Garrett never uses magic as a solution, but I did not care for these magical intrusions in my detective story.

I guess fantasy just isn't my genre, which is weird, since my all-time favorite novel is Michael Ende's The Never-Ending Story (1979).

Luckily, this time, the plot was far more inspired than the boring, slow-moving Too Many Magicians, which borrowed its locked room idea from John Dickson Carr, but here the reader is treated to a novel explanation as to how the murderer managed to hang a man, all alone, inside a closely watched office – based on a crushed larynx, height of the chair and a slightly open window. A type of trick you'll often find in Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed series (e.g. the hanging story from Vol. 57).

Considering my disdain for this series, I was pleasantly surprised that the story, as a whole, turned out to be pretty solid with an original solution for its impossible crime. I'm not sure it would make my top 20 list, but the story was good one. Although the locked room-trick would probably have been better served in a detective story without all the magic trappings. However, that is a bit of nitpicking on my part.

So that leaves me with one last thing to say: double damn you, JJ, for not being entirely wrong about "A Stretch of the Imagination." You may continue to practice as locked room expert. For now, anyway.

13 comments:

  1. I'm late, I'm late!! My apologies, it's a busy old week out here.

    I know what you mean about the magic here, but, weirdly, this was the story that made me appreciate Garrett's use of magic. By using magic to determine that there was no-one present at the time he dies, we're saved a lot of alibi-checking and the need for endless forensics to work out what's been used to do what...magic is simply Forensic Science in Garrett's universe.

    So, well, maybe I'm over-praising it because of how much I remember suddenly loving what Garrett was doing, where the magic had previously seemed intrusive (and he gets it wrong again in a later story where someone jumps out of a window and it might be murder...the magic there is just pure nonsense, even if the solution is kinda good).

    However, I'm delighted to see that there's something in the Darcyverse that you don't completely hate -- whoop?

    And, hey, have you read the Michael Kurland continuation novels? Not being a fan of the originals I'm guessing not, but I figure it worth asking while it occurs to me...

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    1. No need to apologize. I can be pretty horrible when it comes to commenting. I'm usually behind or forget to drop a comment altogether. And every so often, my comments don't even appear. Yes, still having that problem.

      Anyway, you can safely say that I didn't completely hate this story, but, as said before, fantasy just isn't my genre and will probably never fully appreciate it when wizards, dragons and magic crossover to the detective genre. When it comes to genre hybrids, give me a good, stiff mix of mystery and science-fiction.

      I know of Kurland's continuation of the series, but after Too Many Magicians I turned my back on the entire Darcyverse. Are they more readable than Too Many Magicians?

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    2. I dunno, not read them myself, though I definitely have one or two somewhere. Might dig one out and give it a look, claim it as part of my Finding a Modern Locked Room for TomCat series(assuming it contains one, of course).

      Watch this space...

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    3. I looked it up and Ten Little Wizards has no less than three impossible crimes! A Study in Sorcery appears to have none.

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    4. Okay, then -- give me a couple of weeks and I'll have a look at TLW. Thanks for checking.

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  2. I read Too Many Magicians, when I was into fantasy lit as a teenager, and can't remember a thing about it now, lol. Probably not a recommendation!

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  3. I hope your disdain for this series hasn't turned you off of fantasy-hybrid mysteries! Hybrid mysteries are a fascination of mine, and there are many fantasy Japanese-language fantasy-hybrid mysteries, but you seemed like you didn't quite believe they could be good based on your reaction to my talking about the Japanese folktale mystery series.

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    1. If you know of a good fantasy-mystery hybrid, I'll give it a shot. I'm just of the opinion that combining fantasy and magic with a fair play detective plot is harder to do convincingly than science-fiction, horror or western mystery hybrids. You can much easier resettle the traditional detective story in a science-fiction or horror story, because they have some clear perimeters and boundaries. You know the limits of futuristic technology or how zombies and vampires behave. My impression is that the fair play detective story has to be shoehorned into a fantasy setting with counter spells and anti-magic amulets. I don't believe a fantasy has ever produced their equivalent of Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel, but I'm glad to be proven wrong on this one.

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    2. "My impression is that the fair play detective story has to be shoehorned into a fantasy setting with counter spells and anti-magic amulets."

      Not at all! I suppose you could say so much if you restrict fantasy-hybrid mysteries to Tolkein-esque, Dungeons & Dragons fantasy, in which magic is large omnipotent and varied to the point of being impossible to naturally encapsulate in a mystery story. However, let's look at the fantasy-but-not-mystery author Brandon Sanderson, who you can call "The Fantasy Asimov". If you'll look into his work, you'll find that Sanderson established "Laws for Magic Systems" somewhat similarly to Asimov's Laws of Robotics. In Sanderson's laws for magic systems, he laid out many ways to develop magic systems with ***clearly defined and specific limitations*** in a way that allows the audience to extrapolate what any character can do in any situation.

      I don't think it's difficult to see how the Sanderson-inspired style of fantasy-plotting could lend itself well to mystery fiction better than the Tolkein-inspired stuff Randall put out. Sanderson largely innovated the way fantasy fiction is perceived by readers and writers alike, and I think fantasy-mysteries probably stand a better chance in a post-Sanderson world than a pre-Sanderson world. Sanderson's conceit was to write magic systems that could be understood as well as any piece of technology, and in a lot of ways this became something of a popular standard among other fantasy authors that can be seen in both the English- and Japanese-speaking worlds.

      That being said... all of my examples are Japanese novels which you can't read unless someone (Ho-Ling, Louise Heal Kawai, myself eventually) translates them, primarily because NOBODY wrote GAD-styled fantasy-hybrid mysteries in the western world aside from a few people, and they all engaged in the pre-Sanderson conceits that you dislike and which I largely agree with you on. It's not so helpful for me to go "Yeah, these are totally just as good if not better than CAVES OF STEEL", and then you have to take my word on it!

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    3. (2/2) Actually, I recognized an English example you can read: The Ace Attorney series, a video game series containing largely baroque, but nonetheless grounded in reality, shin-honkaku legal mystery stories. This is my favorite mystery series of all time, with the third game TRIALS & TRIBULATIONS containing not only my favorite fantasy-hybrid mystery of all time in its final and fifth case.

      From the first game you are introduced to the fact that the quirky assistant Maya Fey is a spirit medium who is capable of inviting spirits into her body. By channeling spirits, the spirit medium's body transmogrifies into that of the ghost and the spirit takes full possession over the medium's body. Spirit channeling is a mystical technique studied by a whole hidden society of mediums called The Fey Clan. There are a handful of mysteries in which this spirit channeling becomes part of the plot, such as a locked-room mystery in which Maya Fey is being charged for a crime committed by the ghost which took over her body while she and the victim were locked together, alone, in a ritual chamber!

      In the final case of TRIALS & TRIBULATIONS, a murder takes place at a faraway mountain resort where Fey clanmembers travel to train their spirit acuity. A children's picture book author named Elise Deauxnim, who came to the resort to get inspiration for her next story, is stabbed through the heart and pinned into the ground by Shichishiro, the seven-pronged sword held by the statue of the Fey clan's founder... and Iris Fey is seen committing the murder!

      The way the fantasy plays into this case is salient enough that this case can only exist within the realms of Fey spirit channeling, but minor enough that the mystery is perfectly approachable by realism purists. The use of the spirit channeling by innocent and guilty people alike turns this mystery into a twisty and tricky murder tale with dense plotting and devious counter-plotting. While I can't quite compare it to THE CAVES OF STEEL because, unlike many of the Japanese stories I've read, the fantasy is a little less intrusive, I'd say as a mystery plot that combines elements from "unrealistic" genres, I consider this one EVEN better.

      Furthermore, this showcases Ace Attorney's unique standard of cluing, having one of my favorite clues in the entire series! Phoenix Wright's dumbass friend Larry Butz falls in love with Elise Deauxnim and tries to become an artist as her disciple. When a bridge was on fire, Larry painted an image of a cloaked figure ***flying over the bridge!*** The explanation is a sucker-punch (and no, he didn't see a flying ghost, that isn't something the ghosts in Ace Attorney can do).

      Plus in the very same game you get the SECOND case, which is so overwhelmingly Christopher Bush-esque that it's disgusting. It even does the Crofts/Bush bit of having the killer be known halfway through the story but his alibi is airtight -- in this case, the culprit was committing two different crimes at the exact same time in two different locations, miles apart. This case is also a ton of fun for having a corny "Gentleman Thief"-type character as the DEFENDANT -- you are defending a Great Thief accused wrongly of a theft and subsequently a murder! It's great, and my personal favorite case in the series, and one of my favorite mysteries of all time (since it turned me onto the gimmick of using crimes as alibis for other crimes, one of my favorite tropes of all time).

      I strongly suggest checking out Ace Attorney, not just because of its hybrid mysteries, but because it's just outright fantastic (except for the few games where it isn't...)

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    4. I think I'll wait for the translations to materialize.

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    5. Yes, but my second comment is recommending an English-language mystery, so you don't have to wait! One of my favorite series of all time, so I hope you get to check Ace Attorney out at some point!

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