Miles Paladon

Created by Robert J. Randisi & Kevin D. Randle

1939 Chicago shamus MILES PALADON is gunned down in a back alley but comes to on a bloody medieval battlefield, with an arrow sticking out of his chest and a bunch of Prince Valiant lookalikes calling him Prince Paladon.

Yep, it’s another of those “how the hell did I end up here?” stories you always seem to run into when you’re wading through the hybrid swamp of SF/fantasy/P.I. stories. It seems that the Prince, the heir to the throne of Palandrum, has taken an arrow while battling Queen of Daman, and some sort of cockamamie sorcery has united these two dopplegangers across time and space. Living as two men in one body in Palandrum, the two men have a running internal dialog which leads the Prince to hire the P. I. to find out who tried to murder the Prince.

What makes this one more enjoyable than most is that it echoes, at times, Mark Twain’s classic A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889), and that its authors are Robert J. Randisi, the creator of more private eyes than you can shake a stick at (not to mention founder of the Private Eye Writers of America), and Kevin Randle, a noted writer of several popular science fiction/adventure novels, including Seeds of War and the highly-touted historical sci-fi adventure Remember the Alamo.

UNDER OATH

• “This is a strange little book, and not just because it is a fantasy crossover. Not really hard-boiled enough to be interesing and not credible enough as a fantasy to be mystifying. Randisi gets better.”
  — Gary Warren Niebuhr (August 1999, Rara-Avis)
• “A nice mix of P.I. and fantasy with sorcerers, palace intrigues, beautiful women(this sort of tale never has even plain women), and sword play. Had a fine time with this one from 1987. It’s set-up for a more conventional sequel, Miles looking for the man who shot him in the alley. Not sure if one was ever written. Finally, a number of fine black and white full page illustrations by Fernando da Silva fill out the book.”
  — Todd Mason

NOVELS

• Once Upon a Murder (1987)  | Buy this book 

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

• Down Those Mean Skies
  An ever-expanding list of Sci-Fi and Fantasy P.I.’s.

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.