About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

CARTER BEATS THE DEVIL
by Glen David Gould
Hyperion, September 2002
483 pages
$14.95
ISBN: 0786886323


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

That there is a mystery in this book is almost beside the point. No, no, wait! Come back! It's a really great book. I've read it three times and expect to read in again, because it is so rich and interesting and compelling. And the mystery that is part of CARTER BEATS THE DEVIL is a doozy - who killed President Warren G. Harding. What? You say he died of natural causes. Well, sure, okay. Apparently, rumors of poison and other forms of foul play have followed this event since 1923.

I'm not a fan of books that can be described as "romps" but oh, boy. This historical tale, set primarily in the San Francisco area in the 1920s (and before, and after) is a spellbinding book. And at over 400 pages, it is never boring. You get pirates, magic acts (and you never do learn all the secrets), presidential deaths and their secrets (and conspiracies!), romance, history and thrills. It is very difficult for me to believe that this is Gold's first novel. (Imagine the conversations around the dinner table as Gold is married to writer Alice Seybold whose LOVELY BONES came out to great acclaim last year.) What are feeding these guys lately? In the last few years, some amazingly imaginative, sweeping creative first novels have shown up - THE EYRE AFFAIR by Jasper Fforde, THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY by Michael Chabon and now this first novel by Gold. Yikes? Is it in the water?

Charles Carter is a young magician who grew up in on of the most horrific fictional households I have encountered in recent years.; his monstrously self-involved and clearly bored mother talked to her nine-year-old son only about her psychological needs and left to pursue psychotherapy for two years (it was very trendy among the well-to-do to have neuroses in the 1890s apparently) , and his father, a very distant and truly creepy man who collected torture implements abandoned his two sons for days during a major blizzard, assuming the two children would be fine, being watched over by the creepy caretaker. The life of the well-to-do San Francisco classes is portrayed as stifling and dull - it's assumed that everyone wants to become wealthy, a banker, and live exactly like these smug types like the Carters. That's not for Charles.

In self-defense and in a search for sanity and meaning, Carter discovers close-up magic, prestidigitation, and moves on to want to be the greatest magician ever, making elephants disappear and beating the devil at cards. He travels the Chatauqua circuit, plays vaudeville houses and dinky theaters, (sharing the stage at times with "Minnie and her boys" whom readers might recognize as the Marx Brothers in early days) and learning his trade. You also encounter Houdini (no big surprise) and Philo T. Farnsworth. The historical details in this book are fascinating and well-researched as well.

When CARTER BEATS THE DEVIL begins, President Warren Harding, who attended Carter's performance the previous night, has died, and Carter has slipped away. A suspicious FBI, especially agent Griffin, wants to talk to him because he spent time with the man privately before the performance. This has, actually, little to do with the rest of the story, and at the same time, everything, as this story winds through and around Carter's life. it's peopled with interesting characters (some of the FBI agents are as fully realized as the main players in the book) and gives you a sense of the eccentricities of the adult Charles CarterŠand his pet lion. Carter is obsessive, wanting to be the best magician; very little else matters to him. And he does get to be very good indeed. But he can see outside himself and he meets fascinating folks.

Populating this novel are fascinating characters like Borax Smith, a wealthy eccentric who founds a home for disgraced women; Carter's brother James and Ledocq, who works creating magical effects for Carter. Best of all is Phoebe Kyle, a blind woman who befriends and is befriended by Carter. This is one of the most felicitous parts of the book as Carter shows that he can be smart and sensitive and thoughtful. He thinks before doing something for Phoebe; he thinks about what she might like, and how things might be for her and he is never condescending and never treats her as a blind woman would be treated in the 1920's, as an object of pity and pathos. They take his new BMW motorcycle out for rides (oh, no, a blind woman on a motorcycle!), they go to the amusement park; he is never patronizing of this strong, smart and independent woman.

There are moments in this book I could have done without; the penultimate scene when Carter faces his worst enemy, a man who has hated him for a long time and wants him dead, is too graphic and long and creepy for me. Gold does have a tendency to wrap things up nicely with a tad too much coincidence and all forces meet at the end. But you know what? So what! I wanted a happy ending. One final gripe that has to do with the production of this lovely book; there is, on the cover of the trade paperback, a very clever bit of Braille. Checking my copy against others, I find that the Braille on my copy has an error, which sort of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

This book brings back a really fine time in my life - thanks to the illustrations, in part. For several years when I lived in the San Francisco area, I spent innumerable happy hours at "The Magic Cellar", a friendly, warm hangout, which was a nightclub and bar in downtown San Francisco. I had never watched magic before, and learned to love it, watching some very fine and amazing performers (and some inept guys as well). That nostalgia, however, wouldn't be enough for me to praise this book if it weren't otherwise great. It's a show of talent of an amazing story-teller who puts you into his world full of enchantment, special people, sorrow and joy, love and disaster, and never misses a beat or uses a stale word or false phrase. 

Reviewed by Andi Shechter, January 2003

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]