Gain Your Copy The Magician's Tale Formulated By David Hunt Formatted As Paper Copy
picked this atmospheric mystery up at a used book sale and really enjoyed it, largely because of the unusual heroine, a punkish female photographer with a congenital vision problem that prevents her from seeing colors.
She's a bit like a vampire, most comfortable at night, since bright light blinds her, Fascinating. The tale revolves around the murder of a young male prostitute, and the city of San Francisco is practically a character, Recommended. I first read this book as a teenager and i fell in love, I have read this book multiple times and it always seems so captivating to me, I get buried in it and the world around me disappears, It is so descriptive and I have always said this is my all time favorite book, I can still see the vivid images of what I pictured as a teen, This is one book I will NEVER forget, If you haven't read it yet make sure to add it to your reading list, It's for sure astar read!!!! "'That, my dear, was the best part! Brother and sister! Like Tristan and Isolde, The depravity of it! The absolutely scrumptious degenerate depravity!'"
When I was a child I could never understand the saying "too much of a good thing.
" I considered it one of million stupid things that the grownups used to say, How could there be too much of a good thing Well, David Hunt's which is a pen name for a really good mystery/thriller writer William Beyer The Magician's Taleis a great example of there being too much of a good thing in a novel.
While the same author's sitelink Switch is one of the best procedurals I have ever read, perhaps not quite lean enough but at least relatively well focused, this novel tries too pack way too many goodies.
Like a cake can be overfilled to nauseating effects with delicacies raisins, almonds, figs, nuts, and others this novel offers dismemberment, magic, sex trade, twins, pedophilia, serial killers, photographic art, bread making, generous helpings of depravity, and even autosomal recessive achromatopsia check it out in a medical dictionary.
The narrator of the story is Kay, a single woman in her thirties, an awardwinning photographer specializing in portraying the people and situations in San Francisco's "Gulch.
" This is an area of sex hustlers, chicken hawks older men interested in much younger ones, and sex transaction brokers in a neat phrase it is the center of "alternative sexualities.
" Kay is street smart, knows virtually everybody in the area, and cruises the San Francisco's Gulch and Tenderloin districts with her Contax camera,
One of her friends, Tim, a young and beautiful hustler, whom she used to photograph, has been killed and dismembered, Kay is needed to identify the body parts she befriends a female detective, thus allowing the author to relate the investigation from Kay's point of view, Connections to a serial killer case from the past emerge and to further increase the complexity the reader learns that Kay's father, a policeman, had been involved in that case.
The Magician's Tale is still a very good book, First of all, I love the highly accomplished prose:
", . . there's the fragrance of wild fennel and nightblooming shrubs mixed with the resin scent of the Monterey cypresses that compose the woods around Coit Tower, I'm so accustomed to viewing this place from a great distance through a lens that I'm surprised by the intimacy this sweet aroma conveys, Suddenly I feel heady . "The long passage depicting Kay's photographic session with Tim is a piece of serious literature subtly evocative of erotic undercurrents, Furthermore, the author succeeds in conveying the specific San Francisco's sense of place:
"I like the Castro, its parade of purpose and flamboyance, tank tops and tattoos, tight asses, pert tits, piercings, muscles, leather, flesh.And of course there is the magician's tale, the story within the story, Those of us who, unlike me, read books for the stories they tell, will love it,
"
Highly recommended novel, but it would have been so much better had the author deleted half of it! Or, even better, why not make two novels out of it There is enough of the "scrumptious degenerate depravity" for two books!
Threeandthreequarter.
One of my favorite books, The main character, Kay Farrow, is completely unreachable this usually turns me off immediately, But the story grabs you and holds with an, . . pardon my lack of originality, . . iron fist. It is cold, hard and rather scary but very, very good, I think this book was a little ambitious, I really like the unconventional narrator: full blackandwhite color blind photographer playing at being a private investigator particularly when her disability is not only regularly acknowledged but a key part of the story.
I like the setting: postAIDS epidemic San Francisco in the LGBT street scene, with all the peculiar limitations ofs life landlines and payphones and lack of instant Googlegenerated gratification.
However, there are four distinct plots being interwoven: ayearold serial killer cold case, a brutal copycat murder, several attacks staged against the protagonist, and the murder victim's hypersexualized and enigmatic sister.
And while these do all end up tied together aboutpages from the end which made the actual end feel like such a drawnout and unnecessary stretch, throughout most of the book these threads are so tangled up together that it's so hard to focus on whatever the present moment is.
I think I want to read the second book in the series mainly because I did like the way the protagonist and setting were handled and would like to give author David Hunt another shot.
A complex story of sex trade business and police corruption, Ik had moeite om me er doorheen te worstelen, Elke kleine alinea was een totaal andere scène wat ik erg afleidend vond, Sommige scènes hadden wat mij betreft weg kunnen blijven want die waren wel erg willekeurig, This is the first book of two about Kay Farrow a photographer who has an unustual color blindness in which she only sees black and white,
It is set in San Francisco and she has been working in the Tenderloin district photographing street
people and prostitutes,
One of them, a gay male prostitute has been gruesomely murder,
He has been featured in her photos and she had hopes of including him in a book, so now she feels she must find out what could have happened.
Kay Farrow is a wonderful character and it is a shame there were only two books in the series, this and Trick of Light, A thoroughly engrossing tale of murder and dark impulses, A real pageturner of a book, very nicely written with a endearing collection of characters, Some of the minor characters were particularly successfully drawn in my view, Hunt also manages to make San Francisco a welcome part of the story, I picked the book by complete chance and was most pleasantly surprised by it, I've order the sequel. The author's ambition exceeded his skill with this story which is overwrought and undertold, It's interesting for a good portion of its total length, but then the writer can't seem to quite bring it all home,
I would not recommend this to most people, Most all reviewers I've read of this book hone in on the San Francisco elements of this book and the fact that the main character is color blind.
I'd like to hone in on the unusual writing style of the author, At first, I thought something was snagging my attention because it's a male author writing from a female prospective, not unusual, . . I'm a female and write from a male POV sitelinkThe Dark Before Dawn, but then I figured out that wasn't it, Mr. Hunt isn't sounding necessarily masculine in his writing, it's more a detachment of sorts, Funny thing is, is that it works, You are looking at world of white, black, and gray and here is this writing style that completely correlates to it, It sets the tone of the book and stays a constant companion to you as you read, No spoilers here I won't tell you what it's about, Only that it keeps your attention, and that monochromatic feel is unusual and refreshing, .