Bluff

The magician's job is to create a mystery—an unbridgeable gap between cause and effect. Michael Kardos brilliantly constructs his new novel Bluff as a magician would, delivering a perfectly calibrated performance of intrigue and, ultimately, astonishment. At twenty-seven, magician Natalie Webb is already a has-been. A card-trick prodigy, she started touring at seventeen, took first place at the World of Magic competition at eighteen, and never reached such heights again. Shunned by the magic world after a disastrous liaison with an older magician, she now lives alone with her pigeons and a pile of overdue bills in a New Jersey apartment. Performing for a roomful of lawyers one night, she finds herself confronted with the worst kind of audience volunteer, a show stealer, and in a split second of fury she launches a 70 mph-card at the man's face, slicing his left eye. If he presses charges, it could spell her final ruin. In a desperate ploy to make extra cash, she...