Carter Beats the Devil

Starred review from September 3, 2001
Set against the backdrop of early 20th-century San Francisco during the heyday of such legendary illusionists and escape artists as Harry Houdini, this thoroughly entertaining debut by an amateur magician with an M.F.A. in creative writing is a fanciful pastiche of history, fantasy and romance. The plot turns around the questionable circumstances surrounding scandal-beleaguered President Warren Harding's unexpected death on August 2, 1923, shortly after appearing on stage with the magician Carter the Great in San Francisco. Trapped without adults during the historic San Francisco blizzard of 1897, nine-year-old Charlie Carter discovers a book on magic in his father's library and entertains his brother with coin and card tricks. By the time he is 17, at the suggestion of famous "20-Mule Team" millionaire Borax Smith, Carter finds a booking with a seedy vaudeville troupe during summer vacation. Following graduation, he procures a more reputable booking and elects to postpone Yale for a year. At the end of his second tour, he is hooked and never returns to academia. Marvelously layered between flashbacks romanticizing the real Charles Carter's early years on and off the stage and later action in the mid-'20s with Secret Service Agent Griffin's conviction that Carter knows Harding's apocryphal secret, the saga has the dash of Harold Robbins and the sweep and erudition of E.L. Doctorow. As it unfolds as both mystery and historical romance, readers, long before the denouement, will be torn between the pull of the suspense and wanting the epic to go on forever. (Sept.)Forecast:Hyperion is putting $100,000 of marketing muscle behind this dazzling debut, with eye-catching cover art from a vintage magic poster on the front and effusive praise from the likes of Michael Chabon on the back, so prestidigitation won't be required to make it fly off shelves.

Starred review from July 1, 2001
In the early twentieth century, the U.S. was alive with magic and in love with the illusionists who performed it. Gold's first novel, set in the 1920s, follows the exploits of Carter the Great, a magician who is under suspicion by the Secret Service in the death of President Harding, who is decapitated in one of Carter's performances, then eaten by a lion. The president, of course, reappears onstage moments later, smiling and unscathed, but when he suddenly and mysteriously dies just hours later, the entire country wonders just what Carter did to him during the show. Peppering his fiction with obscure historical facts, Gold follows the early life of Charles Carter, chronicling the story of his interest in magic and his early struggles to become well known and respected. His travails introduce a wonderful cast of characters, including bootleggers, pirates, an ill-tempered and vindictive rival, a beautiful but volatile assistant, a mysterious blind woman who seems to know everything about Carter, a brilliant young scientist, an eccentric millionaire, corporate spies, and a federal agent determined to get his man. Harassed and pursued for a secret gleaned from the late president, Carter has yet to perform his greatest trick, and just as the magician stays a step ahead of his adversaries, Gold manages to stay a step ahead of the reader. Like the best magicians, Gold puts on an amazing show, distracting his readers at critical moments and delighting them when surprises are revealed. A brilliant first novel from a promising new author.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)