Detective Strongoak and the Case of the Dead Elf

The world turns and changes, as it has an annoying habit of doing, and Midearth changes with it. History becomes tradition, becomes fable and is reborn as the main feature at your local Palantire Picture House. This is the shiny, bright New Age, you see. In modern Midearth they’ve got steam wagons, speech horns and performance art. And in Midearth the various peoples, men, goblins, elves, gnomes and the pix, have to get by as best they can – especially in the seething metropolis that is The Citadel.

Crime is still with us too, but now that goblins carry shooters, down those mean cobbled streets a dwarf must walk tall. Yes, dwarves are still around as well; dwarves like Nicely Strongoak, Master Detective and Shield for Hire, and this is his toughest case.

A dragon’s dunghill may smell bad, but not half as bad as politics. The elves came back you see, bringing with them the democratic process, but it’s funny how they still seem to be running everything; ‘all peoples are created equal’, but some with blue eyes, blond hair and pointy ears are more equal than others. Now a new political party has sprung up amongst the younger elves and men, the Citadel Alliance Party, with smart blue shirts, a fancy logo and some nasty ideas about equality.

Nicely’s search for a lost boyfriend takes him deep into the murky world of Citadel politics, via surfing elves, a race horse called Rosebud, a stolen emerald ring and a pocket dragon. But it’s only when Nicely and an elf called Truetouch have a narcotic-induced crash into the river that the case really heats up. Nobody misses Truetouch and that is not right, because in the Citadel there’s always somebody around who should miss A DEAD ELF.

Comedy fantasy meets detective fantasy in a seedy underworld bar run by a defrocked wizard.