As the time was short, they couldn't speak at length, but they did manage to speak in depth.ĭespite such titillation, there's not much of substance for the reader to start with. It was very quiet for just a moment, and then the two men, president and magician, began a discussion. Harding let his hands down a little, and peeked his face around them. 'It involves being butchered with knives and eaten by a wild animal.' 'In any case, I know which part of my act you might enjoy the most,' Carter smiled his half-smile. Gold stacks the first chapter of Carter Beats the Devil with such a profusion of quirky characters, coy historical references and red herrings that the story comes near to exploding in his face from an excess of cleverness. Instead, the magician eludes authorities and sets sail on a cruise ship to Athens, only to reappear in San Francisco a few days later. But the taciturn Carter, still recovering from the violent demise of his young wife in a magic trick gone wrong some years earlier, simply refuses to tell anyone what the unhappy chief executive revealed to him in his last moments. It's likely that the president's backstage visit with the magician, and his subsequent eagerness to participate in a hair-raising stunt, holds a clue to his unexplained death a few hours later in a San Francisco hotel room.

The dissolute president, leading an administration that is sinking into unprecedented corruption and greed, has appeared anxious and frightened during a 1923 train trip to the West Coast, designed as an escape from the political anxieties of Washington, D.C. The victim - here Gold goes for high stakes - is none other than the 29th president of the United States, Warren G. The novel's sleuth, on the other hand, is a bumbler: Jack Griffin, a retirement-age Secret Service agent despised by his younger colleagues. The apparent murderer is glamorous and appealing: Charles Carter, a well-known magician from a wealthy family of San Francisco eccentrics.

Like a veteran illusionist, first-time author Glen David Gold puts his audience off balance immediately. Set in the early 20th-century world of vaudeville magic, Carter Beats the Devil is as fascinating - and also as frustrating - as a conjurer's act. Review | Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold

Carter beats the devil