Girls of Geek Book Review: Now You See It...

Written by:  Scotty

Maximillian, the Great Delacorte is nearing the end of his career, at least that is what his agent and wife believe.  But Maximillian is not willing to go down without a fight.  He has one or two more tricks up his sleeve being an accomplished magician and such.  Max is looking to prove himself to the loved ones in his life, especially his wife and assistant Cassandra who has been looking elsewhere for work right now. 

Maximillian spends most of his time in the Magic Room, aptly named as this is where he develops and refines his tricks before taking them on stage.  Now Max’s father stays in the house as well.  Suffering a stroke on stage, his father is more or less a vegetable for the time being, not being able to move on his own, or much less speak, he just sits in his chair and watches his son work.  But there is one special afternoon that his father will never forget, as he is witness to a fantastic and magical, albeit terrible performance.

Harry Kendal, Max’s long time agent comes to visit his soon to be ex-client. Unless Max will update his act and start going to events again, Harry will have to drop him from the client list.  Although Harry loves this old performer, he seems to have eyes for his wife, Cassandra.  With Max not in the house upon Harry's arrival, Harry takes the opportunity to put the moves on young Cassandra in the Magic Room, right in front of Max’s father.  Knowing that dear old dad would never be able to recount this to his son, much less anyone else, Cassandra is quite willing to let him watch. Then poof, as a true magician should enter, Max magically appears in the room, seemingly out of thin air.  Sending his wife out to the store, Max sits down with his agent and they begin to discuss their future together. 

Richard Matheson has the character of Maximillian completely locked down in Now You See It.  Max is not willing to lay down or be taken off of the main stage at this point and is more than willing to take his tricks to the extreme.  Just starting to play with his agent, Max has a camera that captures facial features and projects them into a little globe.  Being able to control the speech patterns, Max is more than willing to trick someone into having a conversation with themselves without any consequences, at least not right away.  Harry is impressed by this new trick, but as the afternoon sets in, the tricks get more extreme and someone is going to end up getting hurt.

Not being able to give away too much about this book, it is about a magician of course, Matheson has the attitude locked down of a man at the end of his rope.  This book is a page turner, especially at the end of each chapter, because you will need to know what happened a page or two previously.  Full of twists and turns as only a master of suspense can provide, Matheson delivers wonderfully with this book.  If you have ever been fascinated by magic, fine writing and twist endings, you will not be disappointed by this novel at all, ‘for a magician must foremost be an accomplished actor.’  You got that right. Happy reading!

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