Description
From Kirkus Reviews First hardcover appearance for Lackey's Bardic Voices series (The Eagle and the Nightingales, etc.). In the city of Haldene, constable Tal Rufen ponders a string of brutal murders. The victims are all poor street-musician girls, but Tal's clues are confusing: The perpetrators are also all dead (they always commit suicide right after carrying out a murder); in every case, the weapon is a knife with a characteristic blade, but somehow it invariably vanishes from the crime scene; as for the weather, it's always raining--because water washes away traces of magic? Confronted with indifference by his superiors (the cases are, after all, technically solved), Tal resigns when the murders stop and heads for Kingsford, a city in chaos where such crimes could go undetected. Sure enough, the murders begin again. Tal, now working for High Bishop Ardis, investigates and eventually discovers that a mage named Rand, who has the ability to transform himself into the Black Bird, seeks revenge for perceived wrongs done him in the past. And so he has orchestrated the murders as a means of enhancing his magical powers. Between the leisurely setup and the protracted windup lie hundreds of pages of verbose twiddling. Only fans who need everything spelled out in the tiniest detail will stick around. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the paperback edition.
Features & Highlights
- A MAGICAL MANIAC IS LOOSE IN ALANDA!A magical murderer is loose in Alanda. The victims are always women, always lower-class, and the weapon is always a three-sided stiletto, most often found among Church regalia. But the killers are never churchmen, and they always commit suicide immediately after the bloody deed.Tal Rufen is just a simple constable. But he really cares about his job, and when one of these murder/suicides happens on his beat he becomes obsessed. His superiors don't care—the victims will never be missed, and their murderers are already justly dead. But every instinct Tal Rufen has cries out that he has seen only one small piece of a bigger and much nastier puzzle....At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).Mercedes Lackey has a degree in biology from Purdue University. Like many writers, she has worked at a variety of jobs including short stints as a waitress, security guard, telephone surveyor and artist's model. A longer period of time was spent as a computer programmer for American Airlines. What she is most known for, however, and what has inspired a national fan club of over one thousand members, are her inventive fantasy novels. She lives outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma, with her husband and collaborator, artist Larry Dixon, and their ever growing menagerie. Larry and Misty are both members of SOAR (Support Our American Raptors), sponsors of the Sutton Avian Research Center in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and continue to work rehabilitating birds to live in the wild.
