I recently happened across a Twitter conversation in which an author asserted, with the unwavering confidence of a person about to denounce the heliocentric model of the Solar System, that mystery/detective/police or legal procedurals are antithetical to horror/fantasy. This is a claim for which I am grateful. My quest for inspiration is endless and nothing serves me quite as well as a bar so low it requires a trench.
The assertion is unsurprisingly related1 to a debate back in the 1950s about whether science fiction mysteries were possible, given that detectives could easily solve the mystery with futuristic technology in a manner the reader could not duplicate. As one might expect from writers, a number of them took this as a challenge. Thus, a small flurry of science fiction mysteries appeared in the 1950s. Perhaps most remarkable was Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man, which chose as its setting one in which getting away with murder should be impossible, before depicting how one might go about doing just that in a society filled with telepaths.2
In this case, the easiest disproof seems to be to provide at least one example of the eight combinations of mystery, detective, police, and legal procedurals with fantasy and horror.
For the purposes of this proof by example, police mysteries involve crime-solvers who are state sanctioned, detectives are individuals who do not work for the state but who may be hired, mysteries feature crime-solvers who do not fall into the previous two sets, and legal procedurals focus on court systems. Like science fiction and fantasy, these are not really distinct sets.3 Fantasy is fiction incorporating a significant supernatural or magical element. Horror can cover much the same territory4, in such a way as to create tension or dread for which positive catharsis seems unlikely. Your definitions may differ—feel free to expound on this in comments.
Mystery horror: Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated (April 5, 2010–April 5, 2013)
This entry in the long-running Scooby-Doo! franchise begins conventionally enough. Four teens (Fred, Daphne, Velma, and Shaggy) and their talking dog (Scooby-Doo) solve seemingly supernatural mysteries in Crystal Cove. As one might expect in a series where the dog talks, the solutions invariably prove entirely mundane. Or so it appears at first. In fact, Crystal Cove is and has been for centuries home to a malign cosmic entity. Should the teens fail to uncover and confound their unseen foe, Crystal Cove (and perhaps the world itself) face certain doom.
Detective horror: Cast a Deadly Spell directed by Martin Campbell, written by Joseph Dougherty (1991)
In a 1948 Los Angeles where magic is as commonplace as jet airplanes, electric washing machines, and automobiles, private detective Harry Philip Lovecraft stands out. Lovecraft refuses to use magic, preferring to rely on cunning, insight, and experience rather than sorcery’s dubious shortcuts. This moral stance makes Lovecraft uniquely useful to his latest client. Of all the detectives in this fantastic Los Angeles, Harry Philip Lovecraft is the only one so uninformed about magic that he would willing accept a commission to locate for the client a copy of the infamous dark grimoire, the Necronomicon.
Police horror: The Wolfen by Whitley Strieber (1978)
We humans like to believe we are at the top of the food chain. NYPD cops Hugo DiFalco and Dennis Houlihan could argue otherwise, had DiFalco and Houlihan not perished discovering that there is at least one species for whom humans are prey. The evidence suggests that the two cops were simply victims of improbable circumstance and opportunistic feral dogs. However, as Detectives Becky Neff and George Wilson belatedly discover, the truth is far darker: to the canine-derived Wolfen, humanity’s view of dogs as friendly pets allows the four-legged hunters to prey without consequences. Key to Wolfen success is concealing from humans that Wolfen exist. Thus, Neff and Wilson’s investigation places the detectives at the top of the Wolfen menu.
Legal procedural horror: “Convergent Series” by Larry Niven (1967)
While most legal procedurals involve lawyers, this one does not. Its anthropologist protagonist Jack would have been immeasurably better off had he thought to consult a lawyer before successfully reproducing the lost art of demon summoning. Demons invented shrink-wrap contracts long before software companies embraced the idea. By summoning the demon, Jack agreed to all the terms and conditions of a demonic contract of whose existence he was entirely unaware…until it was too late. Jack is certainly damned unless he can find a loophole Hell’s lawyers have somehow overlooked.
Mystery fantasy: The Library of the Dead by T. L. Huchu (2021)
In this novel, part of the Edinburgh Nights series5, democracy and civil liberties are now dead in Scotland, where the lower classes are now near-slaves to their “betters.” Ropafadzo “Ropa” Moyo is just one of the many desperate poor. She has one slim advantage over her peers: she can speak to the dead. Ropa makes her living delivering messages from the deceased to the living. Not only does this pay badly, but talking to the dead is a perfect way to become aware of mysteries of which society is unaware, mysteries whose solution could imperil the great and powerful. Mysteries that if investigated spell a death sentence for the unlucky investigator.
Detective fantasy: The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall (2019)
Recovering from a war wound, Captain John Wyndham returns to his college town, the cosmopolitan city of Kelathra-Ven. Not unlike a certain doctor returning from Afghanistan, unworldly Wyndham finds lodging with a brilliant, if hard-to-motivate consulting detective. In Wyndham’s case, his roommate is flamboyantly decadent sorcerer Shaharazad Haas. While at first valued mainly for his placid toleration of Haas’ many lurid eccentricities, the insufficiently cautious Wyndham soon becomes Haas’ companion in detection, a career choice that will supply the increasingly alarmed Wyndham with a marvelous bounty of ravenous vampires, fanatical revolutionaries, and punchable sharks.
Police fantasy: Point of Hopes by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett (1995)
The great city of Astreiant and the monarchy of Chenedolle to which it belongs recognize the rule of law…in rudimentary fashion. However, there does exist a cadre of professionals charged with enforcing such laws as exist. Pointsman Rathe is one such professional. What begins as a simple missing-persons case is revealed to be a problem of far grander scale: all across the city, children are vanishing. The straightforward folk of Astreiant default to blaming the first scapegoats who come to mind. Rathe, for his part, actually cares about the truth. It’s not at all clear that he will be able to uncover the truth in time to save the children.
Legal procedural fantasy: Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone
Necromantic firm Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao has taken on a new employee, junior hire Tara. She is to accompany her boss Elayne Kevarian to Alt Couloumb, where the recently deceased god Kos is in need of the firm’s specialized services. As is the city of Alt Couloumb, which depended on Kos. The firm can indeed raise the dead, even dead gods. But first, a contract must be drafted and signed. This proves difficult. It becomes even more difficult when Tara and Elayne discover that the situation in Alt Couloumb is far more complex than it appears and that much more is at stake than they had expected.
***
These are just eight examples. I imagine if I locked myself in a garret I could cook up dozens more. No doubt some of you are astounded at the books left unmentioned. Comments are, as ever, below.
In the words of fanfiction author Musty181, prolific book reviewer and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll “looks like a default mii with glasses.” His work has appeared in Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis) and the 2021 and 2022 Aurora Award finalist Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by web person Adrienne L. Travis). He is a four-time finalist for the Best Fan Writer Hugo Award, and is surprisingly flammable.
[1]Unsurprisingly because science fiction and fantasy are related, indeed overlapping, genres.
[2]Telepathy being a bit of fantasy that’s considered acceptable in SF because John W. Campbell, Jr. paid well for stories that catered to his particular superstitions.
[3]For example, if it is the habit of the police to respond to every murder by calling in their local crime-fighting nun, isn’t the nun effectively part of the police force regardless of the legal formalities?
[4]Although there does not seem to be any reason horror cannot be purely realistic: consider Jane Austen’s protagonists, always one bad choice away from poverty or worse, with the best hope of salvation being marriage to a tolerable and solvent husband. (They are of course still subject to the danger of death in childbirth.) That situation seems pretty horrible to me.
[5]This was the point where I realized this could have been a two-parter. Oh, well.
The Holmes Dracula File, by Saberhagen, is a detective mystery/vampire story built around the Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, Dracula, by the way, is one of the good guys.
H Beam Piper’s “A Planet For Texans” is a detective story and courtroom drama seton the planet of New Texas where the trial ends with a gunfight. It’s also a libertarian novella, but one that explores a severe failure mode of libertarianism
Surely we must include the entire Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch?
Glad to see Cast a Deadly Spell was included. Fred Ward and David Warner were brilliant. Also the ending isn’t the deus ex machina it might appear to be at first glance. Though some folks may be uncomfortable with the end of the world as we know it being averted thanks to statuary rape (Olivia is sixteen), along with the characters making light of it.
The City and the City by China Mieville is about a detective solving a murder in a city with two castes that each commit 100% to pretending they can’t see or hear members of the other caste.
The first 3 or 4 Harry Potter novels are essentially combinations of stranger-in-a-strange-land, coming-of-age and mystery novel.
It’s been years since I read it, but as I recall PROGENY OF THE ADDER by Leslie Whitten — which may have influenced Stephen King’s SALEM’S LOT — was a mystery with a fangy villain. Another fangy bad guy was discovered in THE NIGHT STALKER, also known for the intrepid and disheveled reporter Kolchak who did his own detective work.
Cast a Deadly Spell was, at least in my experience, harder to find than rocking horse poo for several years, but now is on HBO’s streaming service, whatever it’s called this quarter. Sadly not the sequel, Witch Hunt.
Seconding The City and the City, adding in Simon R Green’s deliciously campy hardboiled Night Side series and the Ankh-Morpork City Watch thread within Discworld.
Hawk & Fisher by Simon Green is another police procedural fantasy.
White Fang Law series by Melinda Snodgress is another legal procedural fantasy.
The fantasy detective I always reach for is Lord Darcy – a pastiche of Lord Peter Wimsey, with some Sherlock Holmes-y inflections. The stories are by Randall Garrett, who was trying to prove exactly the opposite of the tweet that inspired this post: that you could construct classical fair play murder mysteries in a magical world. They’re very good!
5: This was the point where I realized this could have been a two-parter. Oh, well.
You could do a follow-up focusing just on Sherlockian stories- the most recent that I’ve enjoyed being Katherine Addison’s The Angel of the Crows.
Addison has also created an excellent noir detective in Thara Celehar, a priest who speaks to the dead in The Witness for the Dead and The Grief of Stones.
Ego forces me to mention my own Dragon Precinct series, which mixes high fantasy with police procedural — one reviewer called it “Dungeons & Dragnet,” which I adore. I’m in the midst of writing the sixth novel in the series, Phoenix Precinct right now (which is currently crowdfunding).
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
The somewhat obscure and now mostly forgotten author John Riverside’s novella The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag seems to fit the parameters.
Possibly the earliest of this type would be Robert Heinlein’s novella “Magic, Inc.”, first published in the September 1940 issue of “Unknown” magazine. It’s set in a recognizable 1940’s America in which magic is a part of everyday life, in manufacturing, construction, etc. The story involves two businessmen who start investigating what seems to be a racketeer-type operation to get them to use only certain magicians, which leads them to a plot to get the state government to grant a private company, “Magic, Inc.” the sole power to license magicians in the state. It’s noteworthy for its uses of various “traditions” of magic and witchcraft, especially for its inclusion of a Black practitioner of African magic who is depicted in an entirely non-stereotyped way–truly unexpected in a pulp-magazine story of this era.
The Johannes Cabal series has a detective one. The second book I think. Very good, I really enjoyed it. I would also second a previous comment about Katherine Addison’s Cemeteries of Amalo series, very good detective fantasy!
Tade Thompson’s Far From the Light of Heaven, is a SF murder mystery. His first book Making Wolf, although not SFF, is a excellent crime novel set in Lagos.
Ben H Winters works are almost all detective novels with speculative elements. Golden State is a good example.
There is a Martha Wells novel, Fugitive Telemetry, that features Murderbot solving a murder.
I’ve been adding a lot of books from the comments to my to-read list. Love it!
I know its genre has changed over time, but no love for the Dresden Files?
Asimov’s. Elijah Bailey Books
The Gil Hamilton stores by Larry Niven.
Perhaps more obscure is the character of Henghis Hapthorn by Matthew Hughes
The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump by Harry Turtledove is an interesting example – the hero is an EPA investigator in a world run by magic dealing with things like dangerous magic leaks and pollution. Unfortunately it turns out that something very nasty is behind his latest case.
This is the kind of list I can get behind: a list of pieces that i’ve never heard of and a topic that at least a couple examples come to mind. Those Who Hunt the Night, by Barbara Hambly and the who-done-it subplot of Pandora’s Star, by Peter Hamilton. It been years since I last read either but I remember liking both.
Not all of the Penric and Desdemona fantasies by Lois McMaster Bujold are mysteries, but quite a few are, and several of the early ones involve a policeman (Oswyl).
Aside from all the others mentioned, there’s also Paul Cornell’s “Shadow Police” series, about a detective squad who accidentally obtain second sight. London Falling, The Severed Streets, and Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?. The second one features a notable guest appearance by Neil Gaiman. I’d highly recommend the books, except that the third one ends on a rather terrible cliffhanger, and the series is on indefinite hiatus.
Several I really enjoyed here, plus some I will have to look up.
I haven’t seen anyone mention the Green Man series by Juliet E. McKenna. Dan passes as human but is half-dryad; his heritage lets him see and converse with various non-human characters, which can be helpful when they are involved in a mystery the humans can’t solve. The Green Man’s Heir is the first of the series.
One of Martha Wells’s older books, Wheel of the Infinite, is a fantasy mystery. Who is disrupting the vital Hundred Year Rite, and how, and why?
Melinda Snodgrass first released her White Fang Law duology as the Linnet Ellery trilogy under the pen name of Phillipa Bornikova. The third book, Publish and Perish, seemed like a rushed disappointment, which maybe why she has not republished it yet.
I was also a big fan of Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy mysteries. Michael Kurland wrote two additional Lord Darcy novels, Ten Little Wizards and A Study in Sorcery, after Randall Garrett’s death. I enjoyed them but they weren’t quite the same.
Oh, how could you omit Liz Williams Inspector Chen series, in which the Inspector serves as police liason between the human world of Singapore Three and the worlds of Heaven and Hell, with the assistance of his demon lieutenant?
I love these sorts of stories – some more worth mentioning.
Police fantasy – Detective Inspector Chen series by Liz Williams
PI fantasy – Barry Hughart Master Li and No10 Ox books, Fanuilh series by Daniel Hood, D’shai books by Joel Rosenberg
and of course, as hinted at the bottom of the article – Glen Cook’s Garrett PI series.
I was going to mention The Case of the Toxic Spelldump but I see someone got there first.
SF legal procedurals (sort of) – JAG in Space series by John G Hemry (Jack Campbell)
Something More Than Night by Ian Tregilis.
An arch angel investigating the death of a god. All the trappings of pitch black noir fiction mashed up with Persian angelic mythology.
The City and The City, for all its brilliance, doesn’t quite fit, but his other book, Kraken does, a mystery mashed up with fucked up Urban Fantasy.
Is The City and The City really fantasy or horror, though? As I read it, there’s nothing supernatural going on; just a whole lot of people who are really, really committed to the bit.
I understand where the claim was coming from; the idea is that when the logic and rules of the world cannot be trusted, then there can be no facts, no reliable clues, no way to trust the investigation or the conclusion, and there will always be questions like “why couldn’t they solve it using magic/technology?”. But the solution is simple; your fantasy or science fiction world needs to have its own firmly established rules and limits; that way reliable conclusions can once again be drawn, the protagonist cannot just pull magic out of their butt to fix things, and we can have our mysteries.
John Connolly’s Charlie Parker novels are detective stories with a healthy dollop of the supernatural.
For those who don’t like series, Diane Duane’s STEALING THE ELF-KING’S ROSES, which I recently reread for totally unrelated reasons, is a great example of this sort of genre mashup: The story opens like a procedural, showing the workaday lives of two lanthanomancers — magic-using lawyers — who practice in an alternate Los Angeles, and ultimately moves on to a mystery — who is killing all the elves — that involves the MCs in Alfen political intrigue on Alfheim, the elves’ alternate earth. A reviewer on Goodreads described it as “maybe not the best Diane Duane novel, but the most Diane Duane novel”, and it’s hard ti disagree with that assessment; readers of Duane’s other series will recognize themes and concepts transplanted into STEKR’s more technological setting. (The original mass-market paperback from Warner Aspect is long out of print, but a revised edition is available as an ebook from Duane’s ebooksdirect.co except in the UK.)
As you say, this is more of a tripping hazard than a bar to be cleared. Most of Pratchett’s Discworld novels involve someone methodically uncovering someone else’s malfeasance, and at least the Watch stories are explicitly police procedurals.
Jack Vance wrote a lot of mysteries; most of these I would classify as SF rather than fantasy, but they have their horrific elements, e.g. Night Lamp or Bad Ronald.
Lud-in-the-Mist, a classic work of fantasy, has a murder mystery in it.
Also “A Study in Emerald”, by Neil Gaiman! Sherlock Holmes and Cthulhu Mythos!
Well … if we’re going the China Miéville route, Perdido Street Station is a myterious horror, or a horrific mystery. And I’ll argue that it’s more fantastic than stfnal.
Came in looking for Lord Darcy, as did others above. When it became apparent that it wasn’t there, I thought, “Well, at least it should show up in one of the James’ trademark not-here allusions,” and it did! Hurrah!
My favorite books have an occult detective type of character. Some may be categorized as urban fantasy but I think most are at least dark fantasy bordering on horror. Some of my favorites are:
M. R. Carey’s Felix Castor
Liz Williams’ Detective Chen
Stephen Blackmoore’s Eric Carter.
Josh Reynolds’ Royal Occultist series.
Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London Harry Connelly’s Twenty Palaces. Paul Cornell’s Shadow Police
Thanks to all the other comments, I’m going book shopping. :)
There is a new Twenty Palaces book out.
Would Robert Rankins the hollow chocolate bunnies of the apocalypse count? It may be “far fetched fiction” as the author describes it and not as highbrow as some offerings but its a great little romp with a Teddy bear detective tracking down a series killer.
Also I would put in a nod to my beloved dresden files. I mean sure the main plot lines are more and more about the big bad Harry is building up to face but it still has links to his consulting with the police pretty much all though the series
I’ve been enjoying Dan Willis’s Arcane Casebook mysteries. 1930’s-era gumshoe (and magic practitioner) in a magical New York.
My vote goes for John Dickson Carr’s THE BURNING COURT as the ultimate combination of the detective story and supernatural horror.
If you want “hard-boiled PI” as your detective, there’s always Glen Cook’s Garrett books. First book is Sweet Silver Blues. Garrett is the film noir private eye, with contacts he can go to for info. The books have titles with 3 words: (adjective) (metal) (noun). Sweet Silver Blues, Cold Copper Tears, Petty Pewter Gods…
For a “life of a beat cop” story, there’s the Elantra series by Michelle Sagara. Those start with Cast In Shadow. Not sure how much it fits here, though. She starts off as a ~16-year-old beat cop, but over the course of the series she gets involved in more and more of the bigger political/magical issues. She fights it tooth and nail, though. Her dream is to protect the citizens as a beat cop.
Altered Carbon by Richard K Morgan is an excellent blend of futuristic scifi and detecove noir. The rest of the series branches off from that genre, but this first book captures the essence of the brooding private investigators as he investigates a death through the crime ridden city underground but includes a myriad of scifi gadgets and futuristic politics.
I read this anthology of Sherlock Holmes professional fanfic recently – The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes featuring various well known writers. Time travel, dinosaurs, Lovecraftian stuff. I enjoyed it!
https://www.amazon.com/Improbable-Adventures-Sherlock-Holmes/dp/1597801607?asin=1597801607&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1
It’s been awhile since I’ve read the stories, but the novels and short stories about Andrea Cort by Adam-Troy Castro blended legal detective work with science fiction pretty well. I should dig those out again.
Merry Gentry is a PI and while the series often devolves in elf sex it is still a pretty good read from Laurell K Hamilton
Kim Harrison puts out a great fantasy setting in her Hollows series which follows Rachel Morgan a supernatural PI
Last, but not least are the great Harry Dresden books
@5 The first 3 or 4 Harry Potter novels are essentially combinations of stranger-in-a-strange-land, coming-of-age and mystery novel.
Yes. For some reason, Goblet of Fire was the first that really reminded me of a mystery, particularly Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse series. A portion of the Aurors’ office with a “Potter-Granger-Weasley Detective Agency” would be interesting, lol…Hermione would be the one looking up background on clients and suspects and finding clues from that info :).
Ref:
12. Bo Lindbergh
The somewhat obscure and now mostly forgotten author John Riverside’s novella The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag seems to fit the parameters.
Unless I’ve skipped to some alternate world, The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag, was written by Robert A Heinlein. I have the 1976 Berkley Medallion paperback in my hand.
@46 – In its original magazine publication “The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag” was credited to Heinlein’s pseudonym “John Riverside.” I don’t know why.
I think Jasper Fforde’s “The Eyre Affair” fits quite nicely. And if we’re allowed Crappy British TV Sci-fi, then “Starcops” is actually quite good.
How about a mention for John Connolly’s brilliant Charlie Parker series?
I’ve been going through the back issues of Dungeon at the Internet Archive, specifically the ones that have material for Dungeons & Dragons, Edition 3.5. Many official 3.5 adventures hinge on the player characters uncovering, or stumbling over, something that was lost or hidden, but some follow classic mystery plots. Samples:
“Fallen Angel,” Issue 117: Magical infrastructure can suffer disastrous failures just like regular old towers and bridges, and even magically powered cities have neighborhoods for the disregarded and exploited. The player characters must solve the decades-old mystery of the fall of a floating tower that didn’t land on anything anybody cared about. The indifference of the city government has allowed something terrible to fester.
“Mellorn Hospitality,” Issue 107: A protection racket, except with night hags.
“Steel Shadows,” Issue 115: A killer is stalking members of a marginalized group. Somebody is being framed.
Istivin: City of Shadows (series begins in Issue 117): It starts with people noting that an entire city has turned inexplicably creepy and violent. It ends with the player characters racing against time to stop the magical equivalent of a dirty nuke.
The Mongo the Magnificent books, though marketed as mysteries, almost all had fantasy or SF elements.
In Italy, two of the most successful comic book series ever are the decades-old Dylan Dog, nightmare investigator and Martin Mystère, detective of the impossible. They both run in the hundreds of volumes as a new one comes out each month. Quality varies, but they have both reached iconic cultural status and have spawned animated series and movies.
Martin Mystère’s mystery stories explore all sorts of supernatural and conspiracy theory stuff, involving everything from aliens and cryptozoology to the illuminati.
Dylan Dog’s job description is literally “nightmare investigator”. The stories lie squarely in the horror-detective intersection.
It didn’t end up being my style, but The Rook by Daniel O’Malley is a fantasy novel with an intriguing mystery at its heart, propelled by a sort of identity replacement/memory loss.
Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Boys brings in a mystery (or rather, overlapping eerie questions) as well.
“Magic exists, but is mostly hidden and only one small department of the police/government deal with it, these are their stories” is practically it’s own genre now. Rivers of London obviously fits in, but there’s plenty of other stories. If we extend it a little further, Charlie Stross’s Laundry Files, mix fantasy with the spy grenre.
“The Nine Lives of Catseye Gomez” by Simon Hawke (mid to late 90’s?) is a fantasy noir with a cat as the detective
Just about everything I thought of has been mentioned in the comments (or hinted at by James in his outro), so I’ll content myself with just one in the detective fantasy category: The Idylls of the Queen by Phyllis Ann Karr, in which King Arthur’s foster brother Sir Kay is tasked with solving a murder.
It has also occurred to me that the old argument about SF detectives using methods unavailable to the reader is incredibly weak. After all, Sherlock Holmes as Doyle wrote him almost always uses some clue not presented to the reader in order to solve the case.
The Miles Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold is full of mystery themes. My favorites of those are Memory and Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance.
Kim Newman’s recent “Something More than Night” is set in early 1940s Hollywood and combines Poverty Row-style horror themes with hard boiled crime pulp fiction. Not surprising as the main characters are Boris Karloff and Raymond Chandler, with the latter narrating. It’s a lot of fun.
I will note that a Youtube Watchalong thing I am part of did watch Cast a Deadly Spell so I think it’s on the YouTube
No love for P.N. Elrod’s Vampire Files? It’s a series of stories about a reporter/private investigator in 1930s Chicago who runs afoul of a gangster and has to investigate his own murder. The thread that ties the books together is the continuing absence of his former lover, the vampire who turned him (in this world, you don’t know whether that worked until you die).
I’m surprised Asimov’s series starting with The Caves of Steel wasn’t mentioned. Granted, it is entirely written around the concept of the three laws of robotics, but it doesn’t make it less of a murder mystery.
Another detective fantasy has occurred to me. The John Justin Mallory series by Mike Resnick. Mallory is a rumpled PI hired to go into a parallel, fantasy Manhattan to track things down. They all have the title Stalking the… followed by the name of some fantastic creature. I’ve only read the first one (Unicorn) and that was a long time ago, so can’t really say any more.
I always thought both Howl’s Moving Castle *series* & The Chronicles of Chrestomanci series, both by Diana Wynne Jones, are mystery -fantasy.
While they’re pegged as children’s books, adults can enjoy them too & get a lot put of them.
I love how through the entire story, odd things happen, & both you & the main character think, “Hm, that’s odd” and then all is revealed at the end & you go, “Oh! So *that’s* what was really going on the entire time!”
Magic and the Shinigami Detective (The Case Files of Henri Davenforth) by Honor Raconteur. It’s right there in the title.
The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard
Judge Dee mysteries – the originals by Robert Van Gulik and the reboot with vampires by Lavie Tidhar that was posted here on tor.com
#61: Oh! I used to have all of them, but lost them in a move. Wonderful hard-boiled fiction, romantic and suspenseful too.
No mention of Randall Garret’s “Lord Darcy” stories?
Also, at least one of Mercedes Lackey’s “Tarma & Kethry” stories is a detection story.
Mercedes Lackey’s Four and Twenty Blackbirds is a fantasy mystery/detective novel.
It’s not a fantasy, but I always thought Njal’s Saga had elements of legal definition of a crime, law enforcement and jurisprudence before and at the Thing, and the tragic aftermath of a broken legal system
KJ Charles’s “Magpie Lord” series involves a department tasked with investigating, and extralegally “dealing with,” use of black magic, and the books are mystery investigations.
In “The Devil in Velvet,” John Dickson Carr set out to prove you could write a fair-play mystery involving time travel and a deal with the Devil. This is made possible by the traditional belief that the Devil must honor any agreement he makes, however much he twists the literal words, and so can’t use magic arbitrarily.
@62 (and several others): the topic was mysteries specifically in fantasy or horror, not science fiction. @0 alludes to the corresponding claim for science fiction that is sometimes … blamed … for tCoS.
@71: Also, there is a very specific reason why the topic is {mystery, detective, police, legal procedural} × {fantasy, horror}.
Genevieve Cogman‘s Invisible Library series features mystery/thriller books in a parallel worlds setting with various levels of magic, with Dragons, Fae, and an alternate Sherlock Holmes character.
I saw one mention of the Dresden Files, but giving it a little love. Jim Butcher’s protagonist, Harry Dresden, is a wizard PI in Chicago, investigating supernatural crimes and the like. He gets involved in increasingly ridiculous scenarios throughout the books, and I thought it was a brilliant blend of fantasy and mystery.
@67 If something appears obviously missing, look to the allusions James makes at the end. In this case, follow the linked work “garrett.”
Echoing @SquiggyD… Dresden Files!
@24: I recall enjoying the first Inspector Chen novel years ago, though I haven’t read any further in the series.
For something in that vein, I also recommend the Obsidian and Blood series by Aliette de Bodard, about an Aztec Priest of the Dead who solves mysteries (and saves the day). There are only three books but they’re each great examples of fantastic (in every sense of the word) world-building along with intriguing mysteries.
For a more traditional fantasy world, I recommend The Shock of the Night by Patrick Carr. The protagonist is a war veteran turned king’s reeve charged with keeping the peace in a quasi-medieval-European capital. The denziens of this world have certain helps/gifts, which they usually inherit at birth to achieve certain ends, but can also take or bequeath (the method by which these qualities may be transferred is the subject of the novella prequel mystery). Carr does a good job of establishing the rules of the world for the purposes of the mystery, but also upending them occasionally with his lead detective’s outsider viewpoint, who often logically intuits new applications for this form of magic.
I’m not exactly surprised there’s a question of whether mystery works with fantasy/horror (although there are obviously plenty of examples proving this combo can work). But it’s still strange to me sense by that definition, no story should be satisfying in these genres. Granted mysteries may cling more to a certain form of more modern rationality, but if a novel constantly cheats the reader out of any logical progression, if there are no rules or magic constantly interrupts the story without a sense of how it flows, or if characters are mere subjects to the whim of a completely arbitrary plot, I don’t see that it would be that enjoyable regardless? Consider the worlds of Lewis and Tolkien, where magic is not always logically spelled out as a periodic table would be, and yet we understand well enough how it works in this world to accept certain basic premises and believe the characters’ reactions/actions accordingly.
As for horror, Dracula is very much a Gothic mystery, as is The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We don’t think of them as mysteries today because everyone knows the punch line. But they’re structured in that manner, with the clues gradually being pieced together, and the reader gradually realizing with the characters the horrific truth at the heart of the disruption to their lives. How could this genre not utilize the mystery element?
@57: A bit off topic, but I’m interested that you found Doyle’s Holmes to utilize clues not found within the story. As one of the archetypes of the genre I think most of the early ones provide the majority of the clues as they’re discovered, or at least provide a sizeable amount for the reader to follow the deductions made, rather than <em>deus ex machina</em> the reveal. Could you provide an example of where you found Doyle intentionally vague/obfuscating?
P Djeli Clark’s Cairo set police fantasies, short story “The Haunting of Tram Car 015” available on this very site, and the longer “A Master of Djinn” are good.
Thud
27. Is The City and The City really fantasy or horror, though? As I read it, there’s nothing supernatural going on; just a whole lot of people who are really, really committed to the bit.
Horror does not have to be supernatural-it’s only one sub-genre of the horror field.
Nothing to add here except that I have printed out this page for material to add to my TBR pile.
Edit: @Whiskeyjack and @MarcusBorland, thanks for calling out two (or three!) of my favorites: I love China Miéville’s work, and The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump was a small gem.
The two that popped right into my head were
1. “Something More Than Night” by Ian Tregillis
2. “D’Shai” by Joel Rosenberg
Jack Vance won an Edgar for a straight mystery writing under the name John Holbrook Vance. He wrote other mysteries under various pseudonyms. Many of his SF stories and novels have a mystery framework. The Demon Princes series is about catching up with the culprits in the sacking of the protagonist’s home planet. The Alastor series has mystery plots. Then there are the Galactic Effectuator stories. Many of his one offs involve solving crimes. He combines the mystery form with his intense interest in future sociology/anthropology.
Frankly, I feel like every second series these days could fall in this category somewhere.
This mass of comments and nobody has mentioned E.L. Tettensor’s “Darkwalker” and “Master of Plagues”, about a police inspector named Nicolas LeNoir in a gaslight fantasy world investigating horror-themed crimes. Great stuff, very atmospheric, with a classic depressed detective.
Huh, nor has A.A. Aguirre’s series starting with “Bronze Gods” been mentioned. It’s great. Another gaslight fantasy, with a man and a woman cop, both of course with unusual and somewhat mysterious backgrounds, plenty of tension and fast-moving plot, lots of fun.
Also Philippa Ballantine’s Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series, another mismatched couple buddy cop thing except they’re secret agents and it’s very much a romance. Leans heavily into the steampunk infernal devices, and again, lots of tension, ups and downs, fast-moving plot, and general fun and mayhem, plus sinister plots by reactionary upper class types to take over and reduce everyone to serfs again.
The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter by Rod Duncan and its sequels are very impressive, collectively called “The Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire”. Mystery, but somewhat inverted–the main character is a fugitive raised in a circus who usually disguises herself as a man and works as a private detective . . . but in the books, much of the action revolves around her uncovering the dastardly mysteries covered up by the government, specifically the incredibly powerful and secretive Patent Office. She is tough, and really damn sneaky, her circus background giving her a lot of knowledge about deception and manipulation, as well as escape artistry and such. And the setting is really cool–a quite different take on Gaslight Fantasy history.
I’m missing some, just in my more recent reading . . . there’s really a lot of this kind of stuff these days, I don’t see how anyone could know much about fantasy and avoid tripping over it; the start of the article just floored me that anyone could claim such a thing.
Bujold’s Mountains of Mourning comes immediately to mind.
Catherine Asaro’s Major Bhaajan series is a really enjoyable Sci Fiction / Detective Fiction. From the description of the 1st book “Major Bhaajan, a former military officer with Imperial Space Command, is now a hard-bitten P.I. with a load of baggage to deal with, and clients with woes sometimes personal, sometimes galaxy-shattering, and sometimes both.“
I noticed the failure to mention John Varley’s “The Barbie Murders”, although, it’s a short story rather than a novel
Oh yes, at least half of Marshall Ryan Maresca’s huge Maradaine series are mysteries–three explicitly with police officers, three centering on members of an elite martial order of not-exactly-knights who find themselves investigating mysteries (including the mystery of whether their own order is corrupt). Then there’s three with a tough young student of magic who at night puts on a cape and mask and hunts down drug dealers, which has mystery elements, and there’s three centering on a gang of criminals who do elaborate heists and try to protect their neighbourhood, which has mystery elements. The whole series ultimately revolves around uncovering a huge conspiracy.
Someone mentioned Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series; Fforde also did another mystery series, the Nursery Crime books like The Big Over Easy (about the murder of Humpty Dumpty) and The Fourth Bear.
Don’t forget The Last Policeman, Countdown City, and World of Trouble by Ben Winters.
Asimov’s Elijah Bailey series (The Caves of Steel, et seq) have already been mentioned, but there’s been no mention of his collection of science fiction short story mysteries, Asimov’s Mysteries, several of which feature Wendell Urth, homebound exobiologist. The rest are mostly SF as well. I actually don’t remember most of them anymore, but I think ‘Marooned Off Vesta’ was Asimov’s first published story.
How about The Maradaine Constabulary series by Marshall Ryan Maresca?
Or the Elantra series by Michelle Sagara?
In what seems tailor made for this topic, Theodora Goss combines Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (somewhat close to canon) with the daughters of every 19th century horror villain you can think of, starting with Mary, the daughter of Dr. Jekyll and Diana, the daughter of Mr. Hyde. They gather more daughters and solve more murders and mysteries throughout the three Athena Club books.
P. S. If your introduction to Terry Pratchett’s books about Ankh-Morpork’s police was the TV series, The Watch (which was awful), do yourself a favor and read the books.
I haven’t seen anyone mention Cassandra Khaw’s excellent Hammers on Bone and A Song for Quiet, featuring the ironically-named private investigator John Persons.
P. Djeli Clark writes steampunk detectve stories featuring primarily Arab fantasies like djinn, set in a Cairo that is the most powerful and important city in the world.
Check out ‘Hunting the Haunting’ it’s murder mystery and ghosts in the same story.
Fits this criteria nicely…
Check out the book here.
Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula, eponym for the series it kicked-off, has a mystery, investigated by a couple of the main characters, whose solution is apparent to the reader, but behind that another mystery less apparent to both at first.
James Schmitz, the stories involving Telzey or Trigger and the Kith Detective Agency. Telzey is a powerful Psi/telepath.
Frank Herbert’s Whipping Star might squeeze into the list. It’s set in the far future, at a time when government has become so efficient it’s actions can inadvertently and quickly cause large scale damage. Jorj X. McKie, the protagonist, is a principal member of the Bureau of Sabotage, a government agency that uses dirty tricks “in lieu of red tape” to take the edge off that efficiency.
It’s a sci-if legal thriller, ending with a trial that concerns a contract allowing the torture of a sentient sort of star. Seems a bit strange, but this is, after all, from the man who wrote Dune.
Add me to those who recommend The City And The City, both the excellent book and the pretty good tv series.
Thraxas of Turai is as sharp as an elf’s ear at detecting.
overweight wizard-academy washout, now alcoholic PI, solves mysteries (often for the government) in the slums and the palaces of the Roman-like city of Turai.
with his ex-gladiator sidekick Makri, of course.
great comedy-fantasy-detective stuff from Martin Scott.
I’ve got enough fantasy/sci-fi/horror/urban fantasy combined with a mystery books to sink a boat!
Michelle Sagara’s Elantra series and Tamora Pierce’s Bloodhound books are police mysteries.
Tamara Siler Jones’ Dubric novels are fantasy forensics mysteries
Tanya Huff’s Blood Price series is an ex-police now PI horror mystery
Kay Hooper has written a heap of psychic FBI mysteries
T.A. Pratt’s Marla Mason series, magical mystery
C.E. Murphy’s Negotiator series, lawyer urban fantasy mystery
Rosemary Edge hill’s Vast series magical mysteries
K.E. Mills’ rogue agent fantasy espionage mysteries
Mercedes Lackey’s Diana Tregarde books are about a witch Guardian, sort of a magical troubleshooter mysteries…
…which reminds me of the Repairman Jack horror revenge mystery books by F. Paul Wilson…
So many more hiding on my bookshelves!
@58: Agree on LMB – I was going to mention Komarr and “Mountains of Mourning” as other good mysteries of hers. Not to mention the forensic plumbing episode…
I’ve always been fond of the novella “Probable Cause” by Charles L. Harness (a Nebula nominee in 1969), a touching (yes really) story of the U.S. Supreme Court with fantasy elements.
The Craft Sequence doesn’t get nearly the love it deserves. It would make an excellent tv show too.
Oh, there are so many!
“The Devil’s Detective” by Simon Unsworth (a policeman in Hell isn’t allowed to investigate *anything*; until an Angel dies & he’s given instructions by Hell to solve the crime.
“Snake Agent” by Liz Williams (Singapore policeman is tapped to become a law enforcement liason with Chinese Hell, and must team up with a demon to solve crimes that concern both Heaven and Hell.)
The Felix Castor novels by M. R. Carey, some of the Simon Green novels, etc, etc.
Whipping Star and The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert deal with a very exciting legal system where even the lawyers could end up dead. No doubt this focuses everyone’s mind *intently*.
@82– There’s a sequel to D’Shai by Rosenberg called HOUR OF THE OCTOPUS. It’s also very good.
Can’t leave out Lock In by John Scalzi!! The protagonist is an FBI agent solving a murder, with the scifi twist that the agent has a syndrome that paralyzes him. Society has developed C3PO-like robots and the tech to allow “locked-in” people to manipulate the bots to interact with the outside world.
My headcanon is that the Dresden Files and Rivers of London series exist in the same literary universe, and at some point Peter and Harry will team up.
Interesting. I have a vague headcanon that the Dresden Files and the Potterverse are in the same reality, but American wizardry is, shall we say, less organized than European. The Dresden Files “Council” (or whatever it’s called, can’t recall off hand) maps pretty well onto the Wizengamot, even to the point of imposing drastic and ill-thought-out sentences on people who aren’t even guilty. And both Harrys become Aurors or equivalent.
I’d love to see them meet up…
@108: I think someone said that in “Whispers Under Ground”, Oberon – not that one – buys Peter Grant a beer of the brand that Harry Dresden favours. But that’s, do you call it, an easter egg? A shout-out? A tip of the hat?
@109: In my head the city of Dresden is famous for pottery, and for an incident in at least one Kurt Vonnegut novel. And come to think, mysterious pottery appears in “Whispers Under Ground”. Also, there’s a discontinued boarding school where Thomas Nightingale’s generation all learned magic and which millennial characters who hear about it simply can’t stop calling Hogwarts. It’s actually Casterbrook, although it occupies property called Ambrose House. I think a (Saint) Ambrose School probably would be of the Roman Catholic type, which evidently wasn’t intended.