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(Sceptre, £7.99, ISBN 0-340-79499-2)
I deliberately didn't read this book for quite some time simply because I saw too many adverts for it. I'm sure this isn't a good method for judging the quality of books, but I just tend to get a bit contrary when I'm told something is good too many times (similar thing happened when I saw Trainspotting in the shops - I put it down when I read a blurb that said "the best book ever written by a man or a woman").
In the end though, I read too many positive things about it, and I was in the mood for something light but with some depth to it. Carter beats the Devil is about the magician Charles Carter (a real stage magician of the 20s). Carter is suspected of murdering US President Harding, who dies shortly after seeing Carter perform. The resolution of this mystery is the McGuffin for this tale, but it forms only the skeleton on which is hung a fictionalised biography of Carter's life.
In some ways my favourite section is that dealing with Carter's youth, which reminds me somewhat of Robertson Davies' book World of Wonders -- not only because it deals with the early career of a stage magician, but also in the way that, like Davies, Gold manages to combine a light tone with occasional profundity.
Other parts of the book are perhaps not quite so successful -- while a book of this kind needs tension in the form of mystery, it sometimes seems that there are too many unrelated events going on at once, so that as the pieces are put together it's hard to remember what the original shape was meant to be.
Still, this is an entertaining and interesting book, and a remarkable achievement for a first novel. I read it with great enjoyment, and I think it would stand re-reading.
Posted by MFreestone at November 3, 2003 09:36 AM