Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful read
Review: Kudos to Mr. Gold for creating a wonderful world that sucks you in from the beginning to the end. I believe the greatest compliment you can give a novel is saying that it is a page turner and this ladies and gentlemen is a page turner. Make sure you're sitting down when you read this or else you'll walk into a wall
Rating: 
Summary: OVERPLOTTED and UNDER-PEOPLED
Review: Author Gold's historical research and the rendering of his findings are amazing. The acuteness of the physical details throughout the book is impressive, but also overwhelming. The novel is so jammed with period ephemera that the characters don't have a chance to breathe and become multi-dimensional...they're like insubstantial ghosts in an attic full of real, solid bric-a-brac. The plotting too is overcrowded...in certain magic show set-pieces, the reader is asked to follow the tiny, undramatic actions of half-a-dozen or more undeveloped characters simultaneously in order to appreciate the (theoretical) big payoff at the end of Carter's tricks. Logisticians may enjoy this, readers looking for drama will be driven to skimming.
Given Michael Chabon's quote on the book jacket, I was looking forward to a rich, humane, psychogically motivated epic. Instead, I learned alot of tiny details about early 20th century American life and showbiz; the sort of things that are rewarding in a museum visit, but fall flat when one wants to become engrossed in a novel.
Rating:
Summary: Read this book.
Review: This is a wonderful book, one to be savored and enjoyed. If you have imagination and enjoy good writing, this is the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: History And Mystery
Review: I have never been a big fan of magic, but a restaurant I frequent has large posters of 'Carter The Great' covering its walls so I was curious to learn more about him. Some reviewers have focused on the intriguing relationship between Carter and President Warren G. Harding, but I found the first chapter most interesting. Unforeseen circumstances have nine year old Charles and his younger brother, James, alone and marooned in the family house for five days while an unusually harsh storm envelopes San Francisco. It sets the scene for what follows, which is a rich and delicious tale. In the book description, it says this story is a mix of fact and fiction. As I said, I knew little of Charles Carter so I don't know what, in the book, is actual fact and what is fiction. But it made for a very entertaining read and I was sorry to see it come to an end...I wanted more. I may have to read this one again...it was that good.
Rating: 
Summary: Gentle, romantic entertainment.
Review: This book fulfils many of Monty Python's "and now for something completely different" criteria. With equal amounts of verve and skill Gold has painted an engaging picture of entertainment in a long gone era. While this story is definitely from a pre-post-modern period, the writer is very adept at pulling a series of tricks that transport the reader to membership of Carter the Great's audience. Others have already compared this book to an Indiana Jones script, I agree with this for two reasons. On the one hand, both the material and atmosphere of this book and the three films share many elements. On the other, due to a certain "woodiness" of the characters some of the less engaging stretches do very much read like a script that requires skilled actors (how about Bobby Downey, fresh from rehab) to bring the characters alive. While some passages of the book might have benefited from the hand of a skilled editor, Gold's benevolent voice takes you through this book as a gentle breeze.
Rating: 
Summary: Guess it's personal taste....
Review: The story revolves around Carter, a talented magician who traveled the US and the world in the early 20th century. Along the way, he gets in all kinds of crazy adventures, meeting noted historical figures. Among those prominent figures is President Harding, who mysteriously dies the night after he is involved in a Carter illusion. This brings the Secret Service down on Carter, as they search for anything the President might have confided to Carter when they were alone. It's a fairly good plot, but I never found it particularly engaging. Some parts are humorous, and Carter himself is somewhat interesting, but these parts are few and far between. One interesting aspect of the book is the panaorama of American vaudeville, which is somewhat intriguing. However, these attributes were not enough to make this a great book. It is an OK book, if you have the time and are interested in the era. Also comendable is Gold's writing style. His education in creative writing shines through this sluggish plot.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Original
Review: I kept stumbling over this novel everywhere I went. It seems anytime I pulled up a Michael Chabon profile, there was an ad for Carter Beats the Devil. I finally gave in and read the excerpt, then quickly ordered the book so I could read the rest. Carter is a unique tale of suspense, told from the 1920's and has the feel of an old villian novel, but the stunning writing brings it far into the current day. Definitely worth a purchase - and make sure you have a good six hours in front of you before you start. You're gonna need it!
Rating:
Summary: Great escapism
Review: "Carter Beats the Devil" by Glen David Gold was fantastic. Really well written, suspenseful, very well-drawn characters. I enjoy historical fiction, so this was a real treat. It's sort of a suspense novel, but also introduces you to the mechanics behind the illusions created by the magicians of the '20's, '30's and '40's (Houdini, etc.) It has great historical tidbits about the Secret Service and President Warren G. Harding too. I read 200 - 300 books a year, and I'd say this was at the top of my list for this year so far. Also recommended: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon, The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (Gold's wife), Empire Falls - Richard Russo, Restoration - Rose Tremain
Rating:
Summary: Keeps getting better, more or less...
Review: I think Carter has a lot of flaws. I say this with some respect, as I would say "Tale of Two Cities" has a lot of flaws (although some of the Dickens novel is quite perfect.) When I was reading this excellent and high-minded book (Gold's), I noticed, especially near the beginning, that the reader was not well prepared for all the shocks that occur. For example, most of us don't know that San Francisco was one of the first electrically wired cities, therefore when we are confronting the existence of an electrical vibrator in the house in 1897, we don't know what to make of it, let alone the little know trivia that electrical vibrators actually DID exist then! We're also forced to accept that "That's a keeper!" and "Another breakthrough" (yep, psychological) were common enough expressions in the gay 90's. Both of these expressions ring like anachronisms, and frankly, I still don't know if the author included them on the basis of linguistic research, or if they were careless mistakes.
Gold's villains are all alike. They're all a little on the tall side, have mustaches, and TWO of them appear and commit physical attacks against the children fairly closely together in first section of the book. This is irksome, forcing you to feel very sorry for the author, until you realize that Gold is just setting up the major fall guy of the story, Mysterioso, the king of mustachios, for a very large fall.
The rest of the story was easier going for me, and I have to say that I really did learn a lot about Magic, probably at least as much or more than I did watching contemporary magicians. The book also helps one understand the reason for the Code of magicians. Never repeat a trick onstage, never explain a trick to someone who isn't already a magician, etc. These things had to be done to keep illusions magical, and keep magic a profession for the handful of people that profited from it. One effect of reading this book is I'm replaying tricks such as the Lady in a Box inside my mind, and for the first time, seeing what REALLY happened. There is also a Code for novelists, which I mustn't divulge, but say that Gold follows it well.
I found the characters are much better than average. Carter is a nice guy, an everyman of sorts. His ladies are really a bit too masculine, but they keep their clothes nice. Carter's dad is about as two-dimensional as they get, and Gold has him seeing 5 days of abandonment of his children by the staff as an act of selflessness, since two of the missing staff members became famous during the interval for their public acts. He is so elated that letting Dad know that they'd just been cruelly tortured by the third becomes an impossibility and they are sent to the bath alone, literally baring their wounds without their supper.
As I mentioned before, his foes are about as mean as they get. One of the foes, Griffen, is a secret service agent chasing him in regards to the death of President Harding, and a bit of a bumbler. He has his own part in the book and Carter once describes him as "the best audience I've ever had", referring to his capacity for be deceived. The treatment of the early Secret Service is excellent, showing how they were not a little bit like a domestic CIA.
I found it fascinating to watch the plot develop and unfold and am a bit in awe of Gold's education in Creative Writing. The implicit metaphor of the novel as the massive magic show full of illusions is never lost for long. It is clear from certain chapters that, like magicians, Gold considers misdirection an important part of his craft.
So Gold has really written a great book about magic, culture, finance, politics and a little psychology and has shown a prodigious story-telling technique. The predominance of 5-star reviews on the site shows me that I may be wrong about the parts of the book I consider annoyances, or else that they don't affect everyone the same way.
Rating:
Summary: Rich in visual detail, lacking in character development
Review: I'm not sure that 'Carter Beats the Devil' quite deserves the rave reviews it's been getting but it's well worth reading. The cover alone would have sold me but, alas, you know what the pundits say on that subject. Gold's research into Carter and the historical characters of his day allowed him to create a rich, atmospheric and multifaceted setting for his story. I was fully able to forget about the 21st century Bay Area and put myself back to 1923 Oakland and San Francisco. Unfortunately, once there I didn't find a single person worth the trip. Gold writes well but it appears that he was unable to set aside his screenwriting skills and get down to some serious behind-the-scenes character development. While I could clearly envision just about every scene in the book I never formed an emotional attachment to any character, good or bad. He seldom delved into what made his characters tick and end result is that I didn't fully understand them or care much for them. They seemed more like cardboard cut-outs than flesh-and-blood people. In one scene he describes a horrendous case of abuse by The Carter family caretaker yet drops the matter almost as soon as it was over. Are we to believe the only effect it had on Charles was to give him an appreciation for escape tricks? Another concern I had about the book was the Secret Service agent who kept chasing after Carter like a dog with a bone despite the fact that there wasn't a single shred of evidence that Harding's death was anything but natural. We know, of course, that he'll eventually find something but he just didn't seem bright enough to have the intuition of a Sherlock Holmes. I seemed more like he was doing it because this is a novel and that's what the detective does in novels. In the end, I did enjoy 'Carter Beats the Devil' and look forward to Gold's future works now that he's had some practice at real writing.
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