Now You See It... [Hardcover]

Richard Matheson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1995

Summoning his family and associates to his side after a mysterious disease destroys his career as the world's greatest stage magician, Maximilian Delacorte begins a grisly afternoon of magic, madness, and revenge.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The prolific master of suspense and screenwriting (I Am Legend; The Incredible Shrinking Man) here comes up with a knockout tale the like of whose twists and final turns have not been seen since Henri Clouzot's devilish film thriller Diabolique. That it also seems a blueprint for a Broadway play along the lines of Sleuth, with characters quietly doubling in roles on a limited set, is just one more hurdle Matheson offers the reader, as if performing a sonnet in terza rima. Some years ago, the Great Delacorte, a famed stage magician, came down with a stroke that left him a "vegetable," able to move only his eyes. The entire novel takes place through those eyes as Delacorte sits in the Magic Room of his country estate, a room custom-tailored to display stage illusions. Delacorte's son, Max, has taken his name and place as an illusionist. Max is supported on stage by his wife, Cassandra, and her amazingly identical lookalike younger brother, Brian, but for the past year Cassandra has been poisoning Max's food with arsenic and sleeping with his agent. She wants the act for herself-yet Max has his own ideas, and his revenge is the big dish that Matheson sets before us in this dazzler that offers top-flight fun as well as a welcome return to form for its author after last year's recycled Earthbound and 1993's disappointing 7 Steps to Midnight.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Matheson was writing horror novels and winning Hugos, Golden Spurs, Edgars, and more before anyone had even heard of Stephen King. In his latest, a dying magician invites his family and friends to his estate for one last performance.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 220 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; First Edition edition (February 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312857136
• ISBN-13: 978-0312857134
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,098,165 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Richard Matheson was born in 1926. He began publishing SF with his short story 'Born of Man and Woman' in 1950. I Am Legend was published in 1954 and subsequently filmed as The Omega Man (in 1971), starring Charlton Heston, and I Am Legend (in 2007), starring Will Smith. Matheson wrote the script for the film The Incredible Shrinking Man, an adaptation of his second SF novel The Shrinking Man. The film won a Hugo award in 1958. He wrote many screenplays as well as episodes of The Twilight Zone. He continued to write short stories and novels, some of which formed the basis for film scripts, including Duel, directed by Steven Spielberg in 1971. A film of his novel What Dreams May Come was released in 1998, starring Robin Williams. Stephen King has cited Richard Matheson as a creative influence on his work.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fast paced but gets old., May 25, 2005

By 

Horror Reader (Iowa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Now You See It . . . (Mass Market Paperback)

I read this story after seeing the movie Stir of Echoes. It started out really good. I couldn't put it down. Then it sort of did the same thing over and over again. It leads you in one direction only to completely surprise you, but this only works a couple of times. After a while, I was left having a good idea of what was going to happen next. The ending was very unbelievable. Still, because of good pacing, it's not a totally bad read.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Watch carefully.....and learn (from a master), September 25, 2006

By 

James P. Lea "James P. Lea 'bookaholic" (Vancouver, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Now You See It . . . (Paperback)

First off let me state that this is definitely not one of Richard Matheson's best works. However that is like stating that Micheal Jordan had an off day by only scoring 30 + points. You can still enjoy the performance and learn a lot from it.

The novel centers around (and is narrated by) Emil Delacorte a retired stage magician who is now a paraplegic after suffering a massive stroke. In the introduction Matheson does a marvelous job of foreshadowing the coming events and sets the mood for the insanity that follows. What follows is a series of twists and turns that leave the reader shocked and stunned and wondering what is going to happen next.

What made this novel work for me was a number of things 1) Mathesons very tight, almost journalistic prose which allowed him to cram an incredible amount of events into a very few pages. Very few authors could have written such a tight, powerful tale. (The critic who complained about the simplistic style of writing obviously did not get this-stick to long winded overblown epics if that is your preference-but for this story Mathesons styling was perfect.) 2) Having the guts to have the story told in the first person by a paraplegic took guts-not every writer could pull this off. 3) A consistent weaving of twists & turns that was an exercise in prestidigitation in it's own right. Matheson will lead you one way with his plot and while you are looking that direction he twists in in a completely different direction. 4) Matheson's knowledge and explanations of magicians trade secrets and craft adds a verisimilitude to the story that makes it seem much more possible and believable. Not a lot of writers are capable of compressing so much into a 220 page novel and make it work- and only a master like Matheson can make you enjoy the ride at the same time.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars WTF ???, January 7, 2005

By 

Michael Beveridge (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Now You See It . . . (Paperback)

This book was great, short, to the point, but great. There were soooo many twists and turns ir was insane. I loved it. A lot of people complain saying its too short or confusing or whatever, but if you like suspenceful book, youll like this one, it keeps you second guessing the whole time and with little turns in every chapter you may THINK you know the ending, but not even close.
Check it out !!!