A Practical Guide to Lord Darcy Investigates Randall Garrett
Lord Darcy Investigates Randall Garrett is a fan-made audio drama / alternate universe story that reimagines Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy mystery series characters stepping into a meta investigation of the author himself. It exists primarily as a downloadable digital production, scattered across a few fan sites and podcasts. I've spent more time than I care to admit trying to track down every release, audio format, and related material, so here's what you need to know before you go chasing it. The core premise involves the detective Lord Darcy (Aidan de Lacy) and his companion Francis MacAteer encountering situations where the boundaries between fiction and reality blur around Randall Garrett's own legacy. The production treats the author's existing canon as source material while writing a self-referential mystery. It's not an official work — Garrett died in 1987, and this came from the fan community, mostly active in the 2000s and early 2010s. Where to find it varies depending on which version you're after. The primary recording circulates as an MP3 or OGG file, usually around 45 minutes to an hour in length. I found the most reliable source through the old Lord Darcy fan forums before they shut down — wayback machine archives of darcyaide.com and similar spaces tend to have links. There's also a presence on the old SF-Audio and similar fan podcast directories, though those links rot fast.
One thing I learned the hard way: the file you download might be a slightly different mix or have slightly different narration depending on which repost hosts it. I spent weeks thinking two separate recordings existed when they were actually just different bitrate encodes of the same thing. If you want to verify you have the complete version, check the runtime against the original announcement — anything under 40 minutes is likely trimmed or corrupted.
How to actually get and listen to it
Start with the Internet Archive. Search for "Lord Darcy" and filter by audio. The uploads there tend to be well-preserved. If that doesn't turn up what you need, the Lord Darcy Society mailing list archives sometimes have pointers. Joining the list is straightforward — search for "Lord Darcy Society" and you'll find the subscription page. People there are generally helpful, though response times run slow since the fanbase is older and smaller now. Playback works best on anything that handles variable bitrate audio decently. Some of the older encodes have quirks — quiet passages that drop below normal levels, or a single track that peaks into distortion. I use a simple normalization pass in Audacity before listening, which takes about thirty seconds and prevents the volume surprises.
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What to expect if you're new to this
The humor lands differently if you haven't read Garrett's original stories. The Lord Darcy books blend alternate history (England never lost to the Spanish Armada, magic is real) with classic whodunit structure. This fan work plays off that setup. You don't need to be a completist, but knowing who Lord Darcy is and what kind of detective he operates as will help. The basic idea: he's a reluctant detective with magical abilities operating in a Tudor-era England setting, assisted by his friend Francis MacAteer. Production quality is amateur but earnest. Don't expect professional voice acting polish. What you get instead is genuine affection for the source material, which matters more than you'd think when the audio glitches happen. The writing does the heavy lifting. The biggest limitation of tracking this down is simply that it lives on borrowed infrastructure. Fan sites expire. Links break. If the Archive doesn't have a copy cached, your options narrow considerably. In that case, reaching out through the fandom's surviving social channels — there's a Discord server some old fans maintain — is probably your best move. Someone in that server has almost certainly got a local copy.
