I have been a professional faux painter for over 5 years. This is the book I turn to when a client is looking for something unusual. The photos provide endless, timeless finishes and designs. I have spent countless hours poured over Mr. Carter's book and I always find a little something in the pictures that I can turn into a 'new' look. The current 'in-style' colors may change, but that is the beauty of paint! Change the colors and you have a new look. As I always say, the best ideas usually begin as someone else's!

Great literature this isn't, but grand, smart, sure-footed entertainment it is. Glen David Gold takes his readers on a twisting, rocketing roller coaster ride, and he is in full command of his effects, from the moment we step into the car until the moment it pulls to a gentle stop and we begin to breathe again.

The blurbs and the opening pages contain some of the trappings of a murder mystery, in the matter of President Harding's untimely death and the puzzle of what role, if any, the world-famous magician Carter the Great had to play in it. In fact, I bought the book because I have a neighbor with whom I swap off murder mysteries every couple of months. It's not exactly a bait and switch, and the puzzle is eventually resolved, but it is a bit of misdirection. The Harding subplot forms the bookends, not the book. I found I didn't mind in the least.

What we really get is more of a Bildungsroman than a whodunit: the story of Charles Carter's induction into the realm of stage magic, and the arc of his career. Along the way, Gold fully immerses us in two worlds just distant enough from us to be wonderfully exotic: the world of vaudeville in the final days before it was killed off by the talkies, and the world of the San Francisco upper crust as the twenties were beginning to roar.

It's reminiscent of Michael Chabon's "Kavalier and Clay" in the way it makes us part of a small fraternity of hardscrabble entertainers in the golden age of a genre, and the way we get to feel the dirt of their trade under our fingernails. (As it happens, the two books have massively intersecting acknowledgment pages.) But it lacks the high seriousness of Chabon's work.

It's also reminiscent, of course, of Ragtime, in its re-creation of an era and its free mixing of real with fictional characters. But I liked this better than Ragtime or its host of imitators. Too large a part of the appeal of such books is the thrill of hobnobbing with celebrities. Of the many delightfully particular characters from real history in "Carter," there are scarcely any I'd heard of before. Just the two aitches, Harding and Houdini. Okay, I did recognize Groucho Marx's incognito cameo, from a time before the brothers adopted their stage names, but most readers won't, and his scenes work just fine if they don't. Carter himself, his family, the rival madames of San Francisco's two classiest brothels, the teenaged inventor of television, the philanthropic borax king Francis Smith - they were all news to me. And none of the historicals is introduced to titillate the reader with a People Magazine fix; each is a pleasure to know in his or her own right, and each moves the storyline briskly along.

When Mr. Gold graces us with his second novel, I will definitely be standing in line for it.

It's hard to imagine how difficult it must be to write a historical-based novel, especially one based on something so esoteric as magic, but Glen David Gold has made it look easy. He blends an acute sense of time and place with a character that simply holds the reader's attention the entire length of the book. How else can the Marx Brothers, Harry Houdini, Warren G. Harding, and Philo Farnsworth be peripheral characters unless the protagonist is just that much more fascinating? I don't know if the real Carter the Great could have lived up to his portrayal in this novel, but it's immensely pleasurable to try and figure that out.

I can't remember the last time I read a novel with so many plot twists that come out of nowhere and yet make perfect sense. Obviously in his magic research Gold learned a thing or two about misdirection. His only missteps are on two occasions where he foreshadows a bit too obviously, but that's nitpicking. Like John Irving, Gold will refer back to passages that came up several chapters ago and tie everything up in a neat package before the reader realizes it.

Great book, plowed through it in less than a week, recommending it to everyone.

This is one of the most enjoyable novels I've read in the last several years. "Carter Beats the Devil" is fiction based on the life of Carter the great. Mr. Gold narrates Charles Carter's discovery of and fascination with Magic as a boy, his rise from doing card tricks to headliner, and his final confrontation (more detail would spoil it!) Many additional themes run through this book as well, I kept being amazed that this could in fact be Glen David Gold's first novel.

Throughout this novel we encounter many historical characters (Warren Harding, Houdini, Farnsworth + dozens of cameo appearances), but in a fictional setting. I found this to be fascinating, and I enjoyed doing some research on these people's real lives as I plowed through "Carter beats the devil". If the devil is in the details, he must be in here, since Mr. Gold doesn't skimp on them. Truly original, and genre busting, this is a novel not to be missed. Encore!