One night in Waterloo, Iowa, the Amazing Arden, completes a magic trick she has done many times before. She is famous for her half man trick in which she saws a man in half. This time, however, she innovates and uses a fire ax.
The man, presumably her husband, is later found under the stage--killed by an ax wound to the chest. Virgil Holt, a Deputy Sheriff, apprehends her but Arden claims to be innocent.
Along with the Sheriff, readers must decide whether her story is believable. Parts of her story are difficult for the sheriff to believe. Ray a maniac that she meets while still a young girl living in Tennessee, has healing powers. He is a healer and a destroyer-in-one, yet its hard to believe no one detects his treachery.
Arden, then named Ava, teaches herself ballet via the Cecchetti method, in order to escape from Ray's abuse. This plan fails when Ray breaks her leg. Ava run away from home and becomes a servant in the Vanderbilt household.
At Biltmore, Ava falls for Clyde who has considerable talents. He is a gardener who can also turn a profit scouting talent in New York. Ava, still running from Ray, takes off with Clyde where she takes a small part in the legendary Adelaide Hermann's magic act.
Magic and performing becomes Ava's new life. Her business manager, which by coincidence is Clyde, renames her The Amazing Arden. Her show is successful and she is happy for a time until tragedy strikes.
Macallister includes many accurate details in this historical fiction, including the Iroquois Theater fire in 1903 and details from the life of Adelaide Hermann.
Arden is a fascinating character as are Virgil and Ray. The one flaw in the novel is Clyde who is almost too versatile. He is a rake, a hero, a gardener, and a business manager. The ending is, thus. only partly satisfying.
If you like The Magician's Lie, you may like Erin Morgenstern's Night Circus, Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants or Chrysler Szalan's The Hawley Book of the Dead.
Other books with circus acts, magic tricks, or performing arts as their main themes are Erika Swyler's The Book of Speculation and Leslie Parry's Church of Marvels.
Horrifying on multiple levels, Child 44 is a standout thriller.
In the so-called perfect Stalinist state, crime doesn't exist. To admit that it exists is almost an act of treason.
So when a member of the MGB claims that his child Arkady has been murdered, Leo Demidov is told to quiet the family. He does this and more, even threatening eye-witnesses.
He never examines the body of Arkady as the family asks. None of this is unusual. MGB do not normally detect violent crime. That task belongs to a much lower class, the militia.
Soon, however, new circumstances come to light. Leo Demidov's communist beliefs are shaken to the core when he sees an innocent man tortured.
He also learns that wife, Raisa, is a stranger. She married him because she feared turning his marriage proposal down.
He was an agent of the state and she was keen on surviving. Years ago she had watched the Soviets destroy her town and all of her relatives, including her parents, for political purposes.
In Stalinist Russia, agents could be promoted one afternoon and denounced the next. When someone denounces Leo and Raisa, they barely escape with their lives. Demoted to a mill town, Leo and Raisa must start life anew.
Leo is demoted to the lowest rank in the militia, the agency responsible for handling violent crime. Recently, two children have been murdered in the woods near the railroad tracks and there may be more.
Smith has set up the perfect conundrum for his hero to face. A disgraced MGB officer can do little to investigate the murders without risking his life. Leo Demidov must decide if justice is more important than survival.
Plenty of riveting twists and turns, betrayals, repressed memories, mind games, and nail-biting escapes make this a first-rate thriller. Unsurprisingly, this novel has been turned into a 2015 feature film.
Tom Rob Smith followed Child 44 with two other novels, The Secret Speech and Agent 6.
