Glen David Gold's Carter Beats the Devil is something that's becoming increasingly rare: a novel about magic with no fantasy elements in it. But what makes the book truly remarkable is Gold's ability to make real-world stage magic just as interesting and amazing as the feats performed by that uppity British kid in the big glasses: even when the reader is told how the tricks are done.The book gives us the tale of Charles Joseph Carter, a real-life magician thrown into a highly fictionalized story involving the (also real but fictionalized) untimely death of President Warren G. Harding. It just so happens that Carter performed a rather morbid trick onstage with the president just hours before he died, and now the FBI considers him a prime suspect in his death. Carter also has to deal with his own fading career, the painful memory of his late wife's tragic death, and a rival magician with a homodical grudge. Throughout it all, he devises an incredible magic show designed to get his career back on track and knock the people of 1920's San Fransisco off their feet.But what makes the book truly remarkable is Gold's ability to transfer the techniques that make magic so enjoyable unto his own writing style. The entire story relies on Gold's skill at misdirection: the soul of the magician's act, where the audience's attention is drawn in the wrong direction so an illusion can be performed. Time and again Gold gets the reader to think about the wrong person or situation so he can surprise us with an unexpected outcome to a sequence. Somehow this trick never gets old, as Gold, like any good magician, comes up with countless ways of dressing up his tricks so they seem brand new. The book boasts a great mystery and an excellent climax, along with a surprise ending that Gold seemingly pulls from nowhere, like a rabbit from a hat.Carter is a fine historical adventure novel, but there are a few problems. Carter himself is an excellent and full realized character, but hardly anyone else in the cast approaches his complexity; the FBI agent who persues him comes close, but several other characters are rather flat and one-dimensional, including Carter's love intrests and various backers of his performance. The worst offender is Mysterioso (his real name is never given) the rival magician and the "devil" of the book's title. A Snidley Whiplash style campy bad guy, he abuses animals, demeans his co-workers, murders people (with playing cards!) for no apparent reason, looks down on everyone, attempts rape, and so forth. Mysterioso is a fun bad guy, but that's all he is; he's easily the second most important character in the book but there's nothing whatsoever to his character besides being a jerk. Several of the book's supporting characters suffer similar fates, filling necessary roles which they never come close to breaking out of.Despite this, Carter himself is more than strong enough a character to carry the book all on his own, and his feats of magic, along with the era in which he lived, come alive vividly. So if you're looking for a story that blends adventure, mystery and some truly diabolical tricks, Carter and Gold have quite a show in store for you.
By reading the introduction chapter of Carter Beats the Devil you may think you are before a good, solid mystery novel. It has a remarkable, well-written opening. In an evening of August third, 1923, after having taken part in an impressive stage magic show, US President Warren G. Harding is found dead. The master magician, Charles Carter, finds himself in the center of mysterious scheme as Secret Service agents investigates a “secret” President Harding may have been harboring before his sudden and mysterious death. The problems with the book begin right after that wonderful opening. The thread of the story is abruptly interrupted in the next chapter to bring the reader back to Mr. Carter childhood and boyhood years. It is not the life story of Mr. Carter told through a series of intersected flash backs. It is solid block of more than 120 pages entirely dedicated to describe Charles Carter´s beginnings as a magician. Since this long chapter seems to have been written only to fulfill the “fictionalized biography” part of the book, you can safely skip it and catch up with the story at the beginning of the next chapter. The book problems doesn´t end there though. After a promising new beginning, the thread of the story quickly dissolves into a confusing swamp, from which it never emerges. At the center of the book seems to lay a crucial indefinition. The author seems to have never really decided what kind of book he wanted to write. The book then constantly oscillates between a mystery novel and a fictionalized biography of Charles Carter. Amidst that never-solved confusion, the characters never really achieve any resemblance of reality and the plotting dissolves amid a myriad of absurd situations. Most of the dialogues are outright insufferable. As someone has written here, by the middle of the book you couldn´t care less about what really happened to President Harding (or the rest of the characters, for that matter).This is not a good or even an interesting but flawed book. It is an outright bad book. After reading it (or trying to reading it), you are left wondering not only about the criteria used by publishing houses to select the manuscripts to be printed but also about the criteria used by those apparently respectable book reviewers who tells us in the back cover that this is “one of the most entertaining appearing acts of recent years”.
What do You think about Carter Beats The Devil (2002)?
This is a book that will make me get a lump in my throat every time I think of it it. I think Glen David Gold is as good a writer as Philip Roth and that is really saying something. His work is similar because he writes about history in a way that lets you go back in time and live it. You are so blown away by the research that you are then floored that the could spin it into a story. This is a book about the 20s when vaudeville magicians were the most famous people on the planet (like Oprah or the Beatles). I won't include any comments on the plot here but will say this book was for me as an adult as "magic" as "The Chronicles of Narnia" or "The Wizard of Oz." Or for teen aged kids "Harry Potter." So entertaining. So delish. This really is the American novel at it's finest (think Steinbeck, Fitzgerald). I hope this gets made into a movie because with today's special effects this could be amazing.
—Katie Thomas
Yes it was obviously a first novel. Gold seemed determined to cram every bit of research, every idea he had into this. Its length came not from padding but from an inability to leave anything out. a more experanced writer might have held some ideas thoughts and research back for another novel but I suspect Gold did not know if there would be another novel so in it went.[return][return] I do hope he has enough left over for another [return]Neal Stephenson is the only author I can think of who can keep that pace up for book after book. Since it is his first novel, his pride and joy he has obviously polished it with loving care. Rewriting and reworking it. Mr Gold obviously wants to be more than a journeyman author and this his first novel is more than an aprentice piece he is trying for a master work straight away.[return][return]Does he make it? Well the plot is preposterous. but I love complex plot.[return]and he, (like the secret service agent who did not see a mermaid)understands how and when to reveal and conceal, that most essential component of a storytellers art. His characters? Well a lot were mere sketched exagerations or nonentities. The problem of a large cast. but the pacing was first class. There was never a moment reading, whether about Carters childhood or his adult years when I was not eager to find out what would happen next, yet afraid of missing what was happening currently. I was emotionally involved throught. Amused sad or scared for page after page.[return][return]About two thirds of the way through I thought yes but this book was reccomended as an Adventure story. . I dont think this really qualifies engaging though it is. Then in the next chapter Carter is nailed in a packing case and I had to reconsider big time. There seem to be two disparate novels in this book Mr Gold is to be complimented. on marrying them so well. He is no mere journeyman. I look forward to his next novel he has a lot to live up to.
—Simeonberesford
"Basically Dan Brown with magicians" is what I wish had been written on the cover, so I would have known not to read this. Based to some degree on the real life of the magician Carter the Great, it also includes (sigh) references to the Illuminati and Skull and Bones, and some fanciful ideas about the last days of President Harding, who was apparently a real guy. It's suggested that Houdini was gay, a claim I can find zero supporting evidence for online. About the only things I trusted were the (weirdly persistent) jokes about Pez.The whole thing is pretty amateurishly written, and Gold has only the barest control over his plot. The romantic bits are especially wince-worthy; this is a book given to sentences like "It had taken Carter all these tours to realize his most fragile prop was his heart." Despite all this shittiness, the book rolls along in an adequately entertaining way: it's about fuckin' magic; even the most hapless treatment of magic is bound to be fitfully fun. (Get it? Bound? Oh, forget it.) But the whole thing is really immature, honestly. Immature.
—Alex
