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Title: Not her best work
Review: I have been a fan of O'Connell's and have read and enjoyed most of her books. This one was an unexpected disappointment. Besides the tedious detail of hard-to-picture magicians' illusions, its worst failing was the most basic: making the reader care about the victim and solving the crime. Oliver Tree, the magician who dies performing a dangerous trick, never becomes a character the reader knows or cares about. Mallory's passion to solve the crime (not to mention another magician-murder that happened 50 years ago) is inexplicable. Tree never becomes real and his murder is almost a trifling event surrounded by a bunch of other unlikeable characters. Forget this one; not worth the time.
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