2015 Book Review #11: Carter Beats the Devil

[jethrien]

Title: Carter Beats the Devil
Author: Glen David Gold
Genre: Alternate history
Thingummies: 4

Synopsis: A stage magician is accused of assassinating President Harding.

Thoughts: While this is an alternate history, there is nothing particularly fantastic about it. While none of it happened, it all could have.

I wonder if part of Gold's motivation in writing this was to give kinder endings to a number of history's characters. It's an oddly compassionate book, with some unexpected reprieves. There are plenty of death-defying stunts, but there's also an unexpected sweetness.

It starts with the death of Harding, somewhat more dramatically than in real life. Carter, one of the last people to see him alive, is accused of the crime. We then flash back to how Carter became a magician before continuing on to the shadowy conspiracy looming over his death.

In the interim, we have hucksters, pirates, fake escapes, real escapes, blind women, dead women, murderers, and a lion named Baby. Chaos ensues.

Comments

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

What's also fascinating about it is the bits he lifts from real life, and ascribes to other people's trajectories, so that for example, some of the shenanigans that go on really did happen, just not to these people. It's hard to tell whether he's doing deliberate amalgam characters, or just trying to keep the juiciest bits in the story.