Murder by Magic: Twenty Tales of Crime and the Supernatural

by Rosemary Edghill (Editor)

Overview

"Readers who don't mind mixing things up a little . . . should have a very good time indeed" with these short stories blending fantasy and crime (Booklist).

Tales of mystery and supernatural have long stirred the human imagination. Here are twenty original stories of diabolical crimes and magical solutions featuring some of today's top science fiction, fantasy, and mystery writers. From the Elizabethan era to the far-flung future, from the interstellar realm of the Eraasian Hegemony to the Las Vegas Strip, these ingenious whodunits (or whatdonits) are sure to baffle and delight every lover of mystery and the fantastic.

Discover these and other incredible tales:

"Grey Eminence" by Mercedes Lackey: In Victorian-era London, two young girls with mysterious powers are stalked by an inhuman killer.

"Cold Case" by Diane Duane: A detective who solves murders by communicating with the ghosts of the victims embarks on the most bizarre case of his career.

"Piece of Mind" by Jennifer Roberson: When the only witness to a murder is a dog, it takes a special investigator to find the truth.

"Special Surprise Guest Appearance by . . ." by Carole Nelson Douglas: In this theater of the mysterious, a celebrated magician comes face-to-face with a practitioner of the blackest arts.

"Murder Entailed" by Susan Krinard: After Lord Featherstonehaugh is found murdered by unknown means, Lady Olivia Dowling must search her stately home to unearth a villain with a magical gift—and a talent to kill . . .

"An entertaining anthology that provides plenty of magical mayhem." —The SF Site

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780446510547
Publisher:	Aspect
Publication date:	09/24/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	420
File size:	1 MB

Read an Excerpt

Murder By Magic

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By Rosemary Edghill

Warner Aspect

Copyright © 2004 Rosemary Edghill
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-446-67962-3

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Introduction

Rosemary Edghill

It is a truism of publishing that sooner or later every author wants to commit murder, and I have proof: a new take on the mean streets from Laura Resnick, a charmingly chilling story from Carole Nelson Douglas, alternate police procedurals from Josepha Sherman and Keith DeCandido-detectives amateur, private, and decidedly outside the law, in settings ranging from the haunted galleries of Elizabethan England to the worlds of the Eraasian Hegemony. And from Jennifer Roberson, perhaps the strangest detective of all.

I hope you'll enjoy these twenty stories ranging from the past through the future, set both here and ... Elsewhere.

When I set out to assemble Murder by Magic, the contributors had only two rules to follow to write a qualifying story: there had to be a crime (preferably murder), and magic and the supernatural had to be somehow involved, either in the commission or in the solution of the crime.

As you will see, that left plenty of room for variation, from James Macdonald's very traditional psychic investigator to Will Graham's wisecracking supernatural adventurers to Josepha Sherman's deadpan hilarious civil service magicians to Diane Duane's lyrical tale of a policeman's last case. And, yes, in Debra Doyle's Eraasian country-house "murder," a homage to detective fiction of the 1920s and a tragedy in the Classical sense of the word.

When it came time to choose an order for the tales in Murder by Magic, I found that the stories seemed to fall naturally into five categories that turned out to pretty well encompass most of the variations on today's supernatural detective story. Some stories were easy to fit into my five pigeonholes-a historical occult mystery certainly is, after all, and a historical mystery with animated chairs is naturally fantastical. But others I hesitated over until the last minute-was "Overrush" a Murder Most Modern or a Murder Unclassifiable? Which subgroup did "The Case of the Headless Corpse" really belong in? Was "Snake in the Grass" Unclassifiable or Fantastical? At last, with much trepidation, I made my final decisions. You may agree with me, or you may not-the fun of getting to be the editor is that I get the final say about what goes where. And certainly you'll have your own favorite stories out of all those presented here, as I have mine (I'm not telling which ones mine are, but here's a hint: there are twenty of them).

Opinions exist to differ, but one thing I'm sure we'll both agree on is that, based on the evidence, the Occult Detective is alive and well a century and more after his "birth"-though Doctor John Silence might be hard put to recognize some of his literary descendants.

And whether it's a story of clandestine and unexpected magic set in the real world, or a tale set in an alternate universe in which magic openly replaces science, the rules for a good mystery-supernatural or otherwise-are always the same: find the killer and bring him (or her, or even it) to justice.

I hope you'll enjoy your foray into the shadows, where impossible crimes are commonplace. I've gotten you some excellent guides.

Come.

There's nothing to fear.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Murder By Magic by Rosemary Edghill Copyright © 2004 by Rosemary Edghill . Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

	Introduction	1
Part I	Murder Most Modern	3
	Piece of Mind	5
	Special Suprise Guest Appearance by ...	21
	Doppelgangster	35
	Mixed Marriages Can Be Murder	51
	The Case of the Headless Corpse	63
Part II	Murder Unclassifiable	81
	A Death in the Working	83
	Cold Case	95
	Snake in the Grass	111
	Double Jeopardy	125
	Witch Sight	139
	Overrush	155
Part III	Murder Most Genteel	171
	Captured in Silver	173
	A Night at the Opera	189
	A Tremble in the Air	205
	Murder Entailed	225
Part IV	Murder Fantastical	243
	Dropping Hints	245
	Au Purr	259
	Getting the Chair	277
Part V	Murder Most Historical	293
	The Necromancer's Apprentice	295
	Grey Eminence	311
	Afterword	341
	About the Editor	346