Amazon.com Review
Fletcher Brandon, known onstage as Peter Prestige the Prodigious Prestidigitator (and offstage simply as Red), has never met anyone as alive as Rosa Kelly. Yet a year after their mutual seduction one night in an Oxford pub, this beautiful, foul-mouthed, flinty Irishwoman is dead--either a suicide or a murder victim. The magician, summoned from a show in the north of England, finds himself hoping that she has perpetrated an elaborate ruse: "I would've given anything for the coroner's officer to whisk away the sheet with a theatrical flourish to reveal a bare table and for Rosa, in a sequined costume, to emerge, stage left, with beaming radiance."
Though Red had seen Rosa the morning of her death, as long-haired and flamboyant as ever, the body's head is shaved and makeup-free. What's more, further investigation reveals that she had taken her passport and withdrawn a large sum from two accounts. And as Red discovers, his lover had deceived him--a master illusionist--about almost everything: her past, her family, her job. When he realizes that she had done so not out of malice but self-protection, he is determined to find her killer.
The Houdini Girl defies genres. It is a murder mystery in which the victim is offed in the initial pages. It is a tragic love story. It is a tale of double lives and identities--even Rosa's cat has two names. Martyn Bedford's third novel is also a physical and metaphysical exploration of the lure of magic, and of its abuses: one of Rosa's friends wonders, "Why are magicians so obsessed with bondage and penetration?" As the immensely talented Bedford powers through his tale of guilt and innocence (things that he knows are far from mutually exclusive), his flawed hero describes the tricks he and his assistant, the Lovely Kim, work on their audience. From the Zigzag Girl to the Lost Princess, these exploits are breathtakingly woven into the action and themes of the novel, which careens from Oxford to Amsterdam--where his heroine's irreparable past springs into full and sordid life. In the end, The Houdini Girl offers provocative proof of Auden's much-criticized line, "We must love one another or die." --Kerry Fried
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Few authors have plumbed the metaphor that love is magic as thoroughly as British author Bedford does in his intricately structured, cleverly compelling second novel. Indeed, truth and lies, illusion and reality, are the substance of this work. The narrator is an Oxford-based magician who calls himself Peter Prestige the Prodigious Prestidigitator (he was christened Fletcher Clark, aka Fletcher Brandon and better known as Red). In a bar one night, Red falls for Killarney-born tough girl Rosa Kelly; she moves in with him the next day. Less than a year later, she dies in a freak accident. In chapters that alternate between past and present, two narratives unfold side by side: the love story of Red and Rosa, and the events behind Rosa's gruesome and mysterious death under the wheels of a train. In perfect counterpoint against the increasingly tense plot line, Red meditates on the tricks of his craft. While the illusions are deliberately not explained, they are described, along with the philosophy and business of being a magician. It turns out that Rosa is as masterful at deception as Red is at illusion, and Red gradually realizes that what he had assumed was the daily routine of a loving relationship was, on her side, a brilliantly sustained facade. At the same time, he comes to understand her vulnerability and the way he contributed to her final act. Bedford (Acts of Revision) is a master of control and technique, revealing the secrets in Rosa's past in the step-by-step fashion of a thriller, creating a web of intrigue, danger and jolting surprises, especially after Red travels to Amsterdam to fathom the missing pieces of Rosa's double life. The central irony?how a man trained in illusion as entertainment learns to his lasting regret that others deal in deceit from more complex motives?adds emotional resonance to a skillful work that transcends mere sleight of hand to achieve poignant meaning.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
