Believe

The novel describes how the "Scientific American" in 1923 starts a special contest (to raise its sagging circulation): everyone who can give proof that there is life after death and you can get in contact with the spirits of the deceased, that one can divine the future, do something supernatural ... will win a price money of several thousand dollars. Spirtism was a great hype at this time. The "Scientific American" choses as judges Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes who in later years turned spiritist and believer in ghosts, divination, etc.) and Harry Houdini (rational magician who always worked to reveal self-proclaimed spiritists as fraudsters who are making money from people mourning for their lost ones). The interesting and rather surprising fact about this storyline is: it is true! Of course the dialogues, several details and several supporting characters are more or less made up for the book, but the general background events really happened - so it makes the book a very interesting reading. You learn more about the lifes of Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle (everything seems to be well researched by the authors as far as I can say from looking some of it up in biographies). And the authors try to present Doyle's and Houdini's points of view without unfair prejudgement and give reasons and "proofs" for both views. But that's also the thing that might dissatisfy the reader most, especially if he does not believe in spiritism, like me, because some of those "proofs" for supernatural powers given in the novel are obviously made up for "artistical" reasons.

This was by no means a master work. But I found it engaging as a yarn and insightful as a treatment of Houdini, and of his time battling to expose shadowy mediums and hucksters. I read it all in one big gulp and wanted more.