The Bullet Trick (book review)

Whoops, one more of the vacation books to review!
The Bullet Trick
Louise Welsh

A seamy, gritty tale of gambling, blackmail and maybe murder staggers back and forth between Glasgow and Berlin. Alternating chapters swerve dizzily back and forth across time and these two cities. It’s like trying to piece together the events of a drunken bender in the hung over morning’s seedy glare.

Will is a washed up stage magician who drinks and gambles too much. (At his best, he was never a terribly successful magician.) What begins as a benign but tawdry performance at a policeman’s retirement party snares Will in a tangle of blackmail, deceit and bloodshed. Although Will’s good at the patter that misdirects audiences, he’s never been a great escape artist. And now he’s caught in the middle of secrets that tie him to people he’s never met. Violent, dangerous people. He can’t help remembering a time, years ago in Berlin, when the German city held both his greatest triumph of his stage career, and a heartbreak that haunts him to this day.

Alternating chapters piece together the parallel stories, present Glasgow and past Berlin. Will is in the middle, drinking too much, hiding from his problems and letting his secrets weigh on him. Too shambling and boozy to be the slick anti-hero you’d expect even a mediocre magician to be, Will can be a hard narrator to like. Following him into the seedier, bloodier situations isn’t for the squeamish reader, or the reader hoping for a magician’s razzle-dazzle. Scenes in pubs and sex shows get sordid and nastily violent. But as Will gets over himself and begins to bring past and present closer together, facing up to his fears and secrets, the adventure takes on a fine, fast-paced showman’s flair.