THE PINKERTON AND THE WIZARD

A famous wizard helps a 19th-century Pinkerton detective fight crime in this novel.

In this intriguing mix of magic and crime fighting, Merlin, King Arthur’s wizard—threatened by an evil sorceress—time travels with his wife to 19th-century, post–Civil War Philadelphia. There, he befriends Adam Blake, a Pinkerton detective (the book’s primary focus). Adam tries to prevent a train robbery; his partner is killed; his fiancee—his partner’s twin—jilts him; and he is shadowed by unanswered questions about his detective father. The man was involved peripherally in the circumstances leading to President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and was shot to death during a bank holdup. To cap Adam’s woes, after taking a hiatus to work with a circus, he is hit by a “shock wave” from a lightning strike. Saved by Merlin’s magic and subsequent prognosticating visions, Adam returns to investigative duties, with Merlin along as an interested observer. Adam’s new case involves archaeological treasures stolen from a museum, murderous villains, ancient Egyptian trinkets, a necklace worn by Cleopatra, a magical “healing cup,” an inept counterfeit money scheme, blackmail, the recovery of a cache of Confederate gold and silver, and clues to Capt. Kidd’s buried treasure. Joining Adam and Merlin is Edward Frost, an investigator for Lloyd’s of London. With unintentionally comic effect, Hetrick establishes Edward’s and Merlin’s bona fides as Englishmen through their use of such Wodehousian terms as by Jove, jolly good, old chap, and rollicking good time. The author succeeds in tying the many disparate elements to the fates of Lincoln and Adam’s father and adds some scene-setting depth with knowledgeable descriptions of shipyards and trains. Still, so much material packed into under 150 pages gives the novel the quality of an outline that could more credibly have been fleshed out into a series. And Hetrick should consider trimming entirely a tone-deaf and gratuitous train station encounter between White woman Rita Sims and Ezra, a Black man who became a porter after she “released him from being her slave” and who flashes her “a broad smile, showing a mouthful of white teeth.”

An imaginative but uneven fantasy/mystery hybrid that rushes from one plot point to another.