Carter Beats the Devil

At the birth of the Jazz Age in San Francisco, the magician Charles Carter walks on to the stage of the Curran Theatre for the most daring performance of his life. Two hours later, President Warren G. Harding will be dead. The mysterious death of President Harding in 1923 is only the curtain raiser to this extraordinary novel of magic and science. Charles Carter is Carter the Great, a name given to him by the supreme showman, Harry Houdini. Carter was born into privilege but became a magician out of need. Only at the moment of the performance, when an audience is brought together by a single experience, can Carter defeat his crippling fear of loneliness. But with every step into the twentieth Century, the stakes are growing higher. Science and the cinema are fast out-stripping even the master magician and instead of that single magic moment, there is only a headlong rush into an uncertain future.


Genre: Literary Fiction

"Carter Beats the Devil is an absorbing mystery, full of magic, romance, and history and populated with fascinating characters, both real and imagined, from the great Houdini, to a doomed President Harding, to the villainous Mysterioso. Glen David Gold is a first-rate storyteller, with his own hoard of magician's tricks." - Kevin Baker

"Settle into your chair, get comfortable and prepare for an absolutely marvelous journey into magic and illusion. You hold in your hands the thick velvet curtains and the stage is waiting: open up! What a lucky reader you are, with all of Gold's world of wonder waiting right here in your fingertips . . ." - Aimee Bender

"A top-hat-and-tails performance...suspenseful, compendious, moving and persuasive." - Michael Chabon

"Gold has conjured one dead president, one blood-sucking dog, a ship full of pirates, and a cabal of Secret Service agents. it all makes for a wild and heartstopping show. Beautifully written, packed with fun, scares, and surprises. And magic in every word." - Karen Joy Fowler

"Here's excellent magic: the hours vanish, the pages turn themselves." - Jonathan Franzen