A review by markeefe
Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold

4.0

This is a big, fun, old-fashioned novel, filled with adventure, romance, and, of course, lots of magic. I enjoyed this book a lot, despite a couple of setbacks: it goes on a bit too long, and the sentence-by-sentence writing itself is actually pretty clunky. Nonetheless, Gold did an incredible amount of research for this novel, and, for the most part, utilizes all of the details he accumulated to transform these historical figures into novelistic characters. And he's very good at building suspense. Oh, but those clunky sentences. I wish I'd known from the beginning to count the number of times he used "there were" or "there was" in order to flatten otherwise promising sentences into mere lists of props for his settings. But, then again, those dully accumulated details gather into wonderfully reconstructed homes, theaters, parks, ships, trains, and midways, all populated by fleshed-out people full of life. Once again, I wish Goodreads offered the choice of 3.5 stars. Because I was highly entertained, I'll round up to 4 stars.