Brian T. Marshall, The Illusionaires (Amazon Digital Services 2021)
1938 A magician performs a trick on stage—he appears to have a third arm growing from his forehead—and takes a bow, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, I am Richard Constairs.’
Then, a voice from the audience, ‘No, I am Richard Constairs.’ This man has a third leg. He challenges three-arm Richard to a duel.
Constairs wants to take his act into the movies. Karla doesn’t. So, he takes on a young apprentice, Charlie, and goes to Hollywood, hoping to bag a role on the making of the flying monkey scene in The Wizard of Oz. Is it illusion, or is it magic? Meanwhile, he’s training Charlie in the art of invisibility. And Charlie is teaching him things, too.
Whenever Constairs needs something, he simply conjures it. Even if MGM and the Guild have everything all tied up, you’d think someone who is able to do actual magic would have the world as his oyster. He decides to take on the Guild. Trouble is, magicians are all dishonest, trick-artists. How to get them to work together? Constairs offers magicians collective bargaining power—they form the Illusionaires—at the same time offering Mr Louis B. Mayer, MGM’s Big Kahuna, a miraculous solution.
1963 Charlie (Charles) is working for the CIA. Now, it’s time for some BIG tricks.
The 1938 and the 1963 storylines tell completely different stories. What ties them together, besides the Charlie character, is the theme. What’s real? What’s illusion? What’s science? What’s magic? Who is pulling whose strings? The truth is as elusive as the Invisible Man. Even particle physics doesn’t have the answer. Says the CIA man, ‘all one can do is pick sides’. This is simply wonderful.
The references paralleling with Oz are beautiful—the possible dual meaning of ‘there’s no place like home’; Constairs wants ‘to see the man behind the curtain’.
The author seems to know all about The Making Of, and the story of how Hollywood worked back then is great fun. How magic works is even better.
Marshall is a master of not Telling us too much, resulting in the surprising elements of the narration—the magic, if you will—hitting us with amazement. Every page has an artful phrase or sentence that will echo in your mind after you read them.
Susie Helme 
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