The Houdini Girl - Tapa dura

A police investigation into the death of his lover Rosa in a freak accident triggers magician Fletcher Brandon's own search through Rosa's troubled past and his relationship with her, a quest that explores the very essence of illusion and reality

ndon, a professional magician known as "Red," meets Rosa in an Oxford pub, where he impresses and seduces her with a successfully performed trick. But their relationship ends tragically a year later when Rosa dies in a freak accident. A police investigation into her death triggers Red's own search through Rosa's past--through parental loss, abuse, addiction, and clandestine loyalties--where he finds himself to be an outsider in his lover's secret history. Red must convince himself that Rosa really has died--that her disappearance is not merely a final deception--but, ultimately, Red's search will be a revelation not only of reality, but of illusion as well: of the illusions in Rosa's life before he knew her, in their life together, and in what appears to be her afterlife

Told with marvelously sustained suspense, persuasive conviction, and grace, The Houdini Girl reveals and conceals as it takes us behind the crafted appearance of two performers in love, into a relat