DAZZLING trick follows dazzling trick in this fictional account of the career of Charles Carter, a famous American magician of the 1920s, whose story, as told here, is woven with that of the better remembered Houdini.

In what, remarkably, is his debut, David Glen Gold takes the bare autobiographical bones of Carter's life and embellishes them with dizzying sleight of hand to create a sparkling and mischievous novel. To adopt the literary reviewer's favourite clich: I just couldn't put this book down.

This is a big, fat novel but there is not a leaden or heavy page in it. Instead, this story rattles along from Carter's childhood through to magical greatness, introducing the world of theatrical magic, while also weaving in a couple of great love stories and a murder mystery teeming with FBI agents.

In a book of conundrums, the greatest, and that which brings Carter to the attentions of the agency men, is what the increasingly troubled President Harding said to the magician shortly before his mysterious death. Carter is suspected of having had a hand in the president's demise, something which the ageing but dogged Agent Griffin is determined to prove.

In a book of disappearing elephants and other marvellous trickery, including the flickering emergence of television, Glen David Gold explores the hunger for glamour and escapism in an era that saw both the Jazz Age flappers and the mud and bullets of the First World War.

A great big, page-turning joy - 100 per cent recommended.

Updated: 09:13 Wednesday, September 04, 2002