The King's Watch

Conrad Clarke, former RAF pilot and alleged gangster, gets a text – and a visit – from The Allfather. Odin has a challenge for Conrad: Sign up to protect England from wild magick and get a commission in the King’s Watch. All he has to do is find a missing witch. Simple. Conrad never could resist a challenge. Before you can say “Ragnarok”, he’s plunged into a world of gods, mages, witches, dwarves, and one very aggressive giant mole.

The king’s watch needs you.... Because there’s a Dragon on the loose. Conrad Clarke is ready to claim his reward. He’s saved the girl, so surely he can rest on his laurels? Just a bit? Not a chance. First, he has to pass a new test. A magickal test. And then there’s a missing Dragon’s egg to investigate.... Even with a new partner, Conrad is soon in deep trouble. Deep Dragon-shaped trouble. It’s time to use his secret weapons: Charm and humor. Armed with them, who needs a fire-resistance spell? Dragons? Bring them on.

Conrad needs a rest. The universe has other ideas. He had planned the perfect weekend in the English Lake District - tie up some loose ends before spending the night with his girlfriend. Simple. What could possibly go wrong? Everything is the answer. An innocent man is murdered to cover up magickal misdeeds, and before they can draw breath, Conrad and his partner in magickal crime-fighting, Vicky Robson, are on the trail of a mage who hides behind dark magick to kill at a distance.

Conrad’s 11x great grandfather has been haunting his house since 1622, keeping a secret and biding his time. A secret that spells trouble for the world of magick. The King’s Watch want to Summon him. The keepers of the secret don’t want that to happen. They unleash a fire Mage to stop the summoning and don’t care who dies on the way. And when Spectre Thomas finally makes an appearance, he passes the guilt of old sins on to Conrad’s shoulders. 

Conrad and Mina take a time-out from trouble in Spain. It’s their own little Garden of Eden, until a Tarot reader tells him that his troubles have barely begun. Expelled from Paradise, Conrad and the team have to chase the trail of a new source of Alchemical Gold. A source that already has Dwarves, Gnomes, and human Mages at each other’s throats. 

The Mage-King of Wessex has passed away, and the stage is set for a battle royal: the richest mage in England versus the most powerful coven of witches. And Conrad finds himself in the middle. The struggle is a civilized one at first - Lord Mowbray and the Daughters of the Goddess meet for a conference in Mowbray’s Mage Palace of Pellacombe, with Conrad, Mina, and Saffron sent to see fair play. Until first tragedy and then murder plunge the staff kingdom of Wessex into a dangerous crisis, and Conrad has to draw on all his team’s powers and his own experience to avoid a bloodbath.

Mina’s Bollywood extravaganza is a huge hit–especially when a surprise celebrity makes a dramatic entrance. While everyone queues for a selfie, Conrad is wondering why a Fae Princess has descended on him. It turns out she has a problem, and her problem is about to become Conrad’s problem: amidst the dark Satanic mills of Lancashire, something is attacking the Fae.

In Clerkswell, the great and the good assemble for a Samhain party. In Manchester, mages prepare for the Warden Hustings. But on a tree in the Furness Peninsula hangs the body of a man. Someone thinks they have settled a score, but all they’ve done is start a feud. A storm is brewing, and Conrad has to stop it turning into all-out war. Fate has dealt him a difficult hand—another new partner, the implacable opposition of the Lakeland Mages, and having to shield the members of his non-magickal team. So Conrad does what he does best: grits his teeth and rides into the storm. 

Conrad has a lot on his plate, and recovering from a punctured kidney is only the start. Top of his to-do list is a trip to Cornwall for an interview with Morwenna Mowbray, vessel and victim of Fae magick. Before he can go, Tom Morton has news on the missing book, the Codex Defanatus. And soon it becomes clear that all roads lead across the Irish Sea, to a country where Conrad has no jurisdiction, no allies, and where his enemies are not one, but two Fae queens.

The last time Conrad was unemployed, he got a visit from the Allfather. Look where that got him.... And now the Gnomes of Lakeland want him to be the new Commissioner. A simple job: Sort out the Assessors and put the Grand Union on a stable footing. They’re even willing to pay for an assistant to help him with the difficult magick stuff. What could possibly go wrong?

Find out what Conrad (and especially Vicky) get up to when they’re not cracking the big cases in this collection of novellas from Mark Hayden’s King’s Watch universe: Byways, the less travelled roads of magick.