Murder by magic: twenty tales of crime and the supernatural

by edited by Rosemary Edghill

  Anita Blake, vampire executioner, is the creation of Laurel K. Hamilton, and has appeared in nine novels since 1993. Anita lives in a world where vampires and other supernatural creatures have come “out of the closet” and into the mundane world, much in the tradition of Dean R. Koontz’s 1973 classic, The Haunted Earth. Anita, who has the innate ability to animate the dead, executes rogue vampires for the state of Missouri. And to her surprise, she finds that the supernatural community has begun coming to her to investigate crimes.

  And that brings us to the modern day, and the wonderful assortment of choices, both traditional and nontraditional, awaiting the connoisseur of the O.D., many types of which you find represented in these pages.

  But all of this really doesn’t quite explain how the anthology Murder and Magic came to exist. For that I owe a personal debt of gratitude to Debra Doyle, because without her, you would not be holding this anthology in your hands at all. A few years back, she and I were both guests at a DarkoverCon together, discussing, as writers will, the Great Unwritten Stories we wanted to write and never would, simply because there just didn’t seem to be a home for stories that blurred the lines between fantasy and mystery. She mentioned a story she’d always wanted to write, about a “country-house” murder set in the Mageworlds uni­verse, where magic was a fact of life. A mystery that—literally—could not have occurred—or been solved—anywhere else.

  “But who would publish an occult mystery set in an SF universe?” she said, shrugging.

  “You write it,” I said. “I’ll edit the anthology.”

  And so Murder and Magic was born. Thanks, Debra. I owe it all to you, and to the other fine writers who came along to play.

  —Rosemary Edghill

  Chez Edghill,

  January 2003