It's a small change, really -- an alteration in the flight path of an arrow -- but it was enough that King Richard the Lion-Hearted survived, and the course of world history was changed forever ... in part because of Richard's victory in the Anglo-French War in 1213-14 -- a war that, in our reality, Richard's successor King John lost.

That's the setting of Murder & Magic, a contemporary (set in the mid- to late 20th century) collection of stories in a world where England is still ruled by the nobility and reigns over England, Scotland, Ireland, France, New England and New France. Christianity holds sway over much of society, and the growth of scientific discovery has been stunted; horse-drawn carriages and steam railroads are the major forms of transportation in a world without automobiles, medical care is primarily handled by magicians, and communication across great distances is limited.

Instead, sorcery holds sway in a world where the mystical arts are very real and very powerful. Even so, it's a very scientific system of magic that is quite well thought out.

The protagonist of Randall Garrett's novel and short-story collections is a detective very much in the style of Sherlock Holmes: Lord Darcy, chief criminal investigator in the service of Richard, Duke of Normandy. Darcy's Watson is Sean O Lochlainn, a master sorcerer.

Murder & Magic collects four stories: "The Eyes Have It," "A Case of Identity" and "The Muddle of the Woad," all published in the mid-1960s, and "A Stretch of the Imagination," published in 1973. Stories involve a locked-room mystery in which a philandering count is found shot to death in his bedroom, a missing lord whose doppelganger is found dead in a bad part of town, a blue-dyed corpse hidden in someone else's coffin, and a dramatic suicide that wasn't.

Fans of the steampunk genre will enjoy these stories. While not technically steampunk -- I've seen Garrett's work labeled as "proto-steampunk" by some -- it definitely shares much of the same spirit. The British Empire in which Lord Darcy lives is a highly detailed reimagining in which history diverged at some point in the past, and science as we now know it did not evolve along the same path. The magic that exists in its place should lure fantasy enthusiasts to the fold, and -- although set in the 1960s -- a dark, pseudo-Victorian atmosphere pervades every page.

And let's not forget mystery buffs!! Darcy is not the deductive equal of Holmes, certainly, but he's on the same playing field. O Lochlainn is very much a stand-in for Watson, lending magical, rather than medical, expertise to each investigation. Of course, they always get their man, and it's entertaining to watch each mystery unfold.

Garrett also wrote a Lord Darcy novel, Too Many Magicians, as well as several more stories, some of which are collected in Lord Darcy Investigates. There are also a couple of omnibus editions, some of which I believe have bonus stories that weren't collected elsewhere.