The Houdini Girl: A Novel (Paperback)

by Martyn Bedford (Author)

Editorial Reviews

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 What's more, further investigation reveals that she had taken her passport and withdrawn a large sum from two accounts.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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (June 13, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375704760
• ISBN-13: 978-0375704765
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,352,137 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars There's a difference between magic and "romance", May 9, 1999

By	U.N. Owen (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Houdini Girl: A Novel (Hardcover)

I normally don't respond to other people's review, but I have to here. Houdini Girl is not about magic and is not supposed to be a magical love story. It is a novel that makes a thoroughly inventive use of illusion and explores the deceit and secrets between two people who had completely different perceptions of each other. I found nothing offensive in the book and found it to be the ONLY book about a magician/illusionist that understood the concept of 20th century magic as entertainment. Bedford's insights into the obsession with dismembering women and rearranging women's bodies in the guise of entertainment and its correlation to the male obsession with sexually possessing and coveting women's bodies is one of the more original aspects of this fascinating book. It's the story of discovering the truth about what and who you thought you fell in love with and not a "love story" at all.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exquisitely crafted murder mystery, February 11, 2002

By A Customer

Martyn Bedford's "The Houdini Girl" was on all the major book reviewers' recommended list last season. I can see why. On the surface, HG reads like a none too extraordinary murder mystery. The heroine gets bumped off real early. She leaves behind a grieving and befuddled lover who sleuths away to discover that she had led another life in secret whilst cohabitating with him. As he peels off the layers to unmask her real identity, we are thrown into a nightmarish world of sex abuse, drugs, prostitution, a make believe family history and a sordid past that made Rosa Kelly the damaged person she had become. Her love affair with magician Brendan Fletcher never had a chance. It was doomed from the start because she'd lost her innocence and was in no fit state to accept let alone give love. All in all, pretty unexceptional stuff, you might think, but what elevates HG above the more formularic efforts of others writing in the same genre is Bedford's craft in exquisitely blending the thriller with the human interest elements to produce a novel that is at once gripping, intelligent, touching and believable. His contrasting treatment of the illusionist's magic and Rosa's deliberate deception of Brandon is both poignant and painful. The premise for HG wasn't especially promising but the result is spectacular. The book reviewers were right. HG is a wonderfully entertaining novel you wouldn't want to miss.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Acclaim for Houdini Girl from Arthur Golden, April 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Houdini Girl: A Novel (Hardcover)

"The characters in Martyn Bedford's persuasive novel will remain vividly in your mind even when you've finished reading about them. The Houdini Girl is an impressive achievement--elegantly crafted, utterly convincing, and deeply felt" -Arthur Golden, author of MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA