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A review by thecommonswings
Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold
5.0
Oh for the days when the Daily Telegraph actually had the most insightful blurb for a book, because Helen Brown is absolutely correct: the real touchstone for this fabulous novel is Wilkie Collins. It’s densely and carefully plotted, full of misdirection and magnificent cameos, with glorious setpieces and a really focused understanding of what makes for great populist fantastic literature (and yes, I am still a bit bitter about bloody Drood)
There’s absolutely sod all here that counts as historical fiction, and instead it reminds me a little of the Bildungsroman of Robertson Davies’ Deptford books with a healthy dose of Paul Malmont’s Chinatown Death Cloud Peril thrown in. Because where that pays tribute to the great pulp authors of the early twentieth century by plonking them in a pulp adventure they would love to have written, Gold places Carter in the sort of magnificently plotted spectacle any magician of the period would adore. There’s some beautiful plotting, some lovely little cameos that behave just as cameos (a lesser writer would have milked that Marx Brothers cameo no end), some audacious subplots, a lot of good character business and a really rattlingly entertaining finale, complete with satisfying revelation of how some of the tricks were pulled off
None of this would count for anything if it weren’t for the quality of the writing and particularly the strength of the character bits. There’s a slight sense in the second section of the book treading water slightly, but I think that’s deliberate because it’s meant to
build you up to a certain kind of climax (I wouldn’t be surprised if Gold deliberately wanted to *evoke* the phrase “treading water” either). And the characters are beautifully done: Carter himself is always slightly boyish and overthinks himself, which is fitting for a character we are reading the viewpoint of for much of the novel. And both heroines have something of, yes, the non drippy sister of a certain novel by Wilkie Collins about them. Marian Halcombe would appreciate Annabelle and Phoebe very much indeed
There’s absolutely sod all here that counts as historical fiction, and instead it reminds me a little of the Bildungsroman of Robertson Davies’ Deptford books with a healthy dose of Paul Malmont’s Chinatown Death Cloud Peril thrown in. Because where that pays tribute to the great pulp authors of the early twentieth century by plonking them in a pulp adventure they would love to have written, Gold places Carter in the sort of magnificently plotted spectacle any magician of the period would adore. There’s some beautiful plotting, some lovely little cameos that behave just as cameos (a lesser writer would have milked that Marx Brothers cameo no end), some audacious subplots, a lot of good character business and a really rattlingly entertaining finale, complete with satisfying revelation of how some of the tricks were pulled off
None of this would count for anything if it weren’t for the quality of the writing and particularly the strength of the character bits. There’s a slight sense in the second section of the book treading water slightly, but I think that’s deliberate because it’s meant to
build you up to a certain kind of climax (I wouldn’t be surprised if Gold deliberately wanted to *evoke* the phrase “treading water” either). And the characters are beautifully done: Carter himself is always slightly boyish and overthinks himself, which is fitting for a character we are reading the viewpoint of for much of the novel. And both heroines have something of, yes, the non drippy sister of a certain novel by Wilkie Collins about them. Marian Halcombe would appreciate Annabelle and Phoebe very much indeed