Review: The Warlock Effect

Jeremy Dyson, The Warlock Effect (Hodder & Stoughton 2023)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60053872-the-warlock-effect

A young German Jew fleeing the Nazis, Ludvik plays card tricks to lure the English boys away from tormenting him. Louis Warlock the magician is born.
Mr Aldous, editor of Illustrated, who has previous history with Louis, challenges him to prove his magic is ‘real’. His assistant (and fiancée) Dinah is hidden within a three-mile radius, and Louis must find her within three hours, blindfolded, only using his ‘psychic’ mental connection to her. They secretly communicate messages to each other by tapping their fingers in Morse code. He passes the test.
A British Secret Service agent recruits him for a mission which requires his sleight of hand skills. But is he dealing with a double agent? He is being used by someone. Are his handlers British? Soviets? Louis is taken against his will, removed from his friends and fiancée and thrust into a Kafka-esque world of mind games. He is sent behind Soviet lines into Czechoslavakia to investigate the sinister ‘Funhouse’, where it seems magicians can even fool magicians.
This thriller is all about mind-manipulation as much as it is about espionage. I was reminded of the sadistic mind experiments the Nazis did, for which Louis, as a Jew, would have held a familiar dread. To safeguard his sanity, he recites the Shema. The story is interspersed with instructions on how to do various magic tricks (which you must not reveal).
At some point, Louis becomes a willing participant in the secret agenting that he is being forced into. Given what they had put him through, I found that a bit incredible. If it were me, I would have found some way to phone the fiancée.
It is well written, and the agent/double agent conundrum adds a twist to what would otherwise have been a simple story about surviving torture.
This review first appeared in Historical Novels Review.