Mystery and fantasy may appear to be unlikely bedfellows. A typical mystery, after all, relies on logic and analysis to establish and maintain the story line. Fantasy requires imagination and suspension of disbelief if it is to hold the reader's interest.

Yet there are precedents for "fantasy detectives" if you will (ignoring the obvious that Sherlock Holmes and other fictional characters are in a very real sense always "fantasy"). If you wish, you can go as far back as Poe's "Murders on the Rue Morgue" to cite a "fantastic" mystery. I prefer to go no further than Randall Garrett's series with Lord Darcy and Master Sean. These characters and their alternative universe are direct inspirations for Mssrs. Doakes and Haig, who reside and practice in a universe of their own, an England which remains a colonial power around the world.

Investigating and expanding their particular reality has been a delight for me. It has also been a continuing matter of discovery as I have chronicled their adventures over the five stories and one novelette in this collection. Four of their cases - A Small Matter of Murder, Savage Customs, Murderous Obligations and Cat's Moon Rising - have appeared in Alternate Realities. In completing this anthology, I have slightly revised the earlier episodes to correspond to what has developed later in the backgrounds of the characters, specifically Mr. Haig.

Sharp-eyed readers of those stories might catch these minor revisions. For me, revising is a never-ending process in any event. I doubt there is one piece of writing I have ever published that, when I read it in print or on the 'net or wherever, I didn't want to go back and tweak this or that. And I suspect most writers are the same way.