Well... I liked it! I especially like the hard-boiled detective tone and how Larrian steps us through her investigative process. I normally don't care for this kind of first-person approach in non-fiction, but it's so well written that it hooked me. Maybe it helped that I know all the players. (Full disclosure: I'm one of the "Watsons" in the book. But hopefully David Burke and not Nigel Bruce.)
There is definitely some new information here, and some known information that is nicely placed in context for the first time. I was most taken with the smaller discoveries. Houdini may have had color-changing eyes. Houdini wore a truss to support what he believed was an injured kidney, but may have been a herniated disc. And I have a new appreciation of Houdini's infected butt boil. Yes, no detail about Houdini is too small...or gross.
It's also nice to have all the various affidavits regarding his final days and the dressing room punch collected in one place. These are fascinating to read. The author has also uncovered fresh information about J. Gordon Whitehead, who comes off as the only blameless person in the book!
Ultimately, this is a well-told detective story with a lot of intriguing conjecture. But in the end, the mystery remains. No smoking gun emerges in the final chapter to prove any one of the many theories put forward. So for me, it didn't land a knockout punch (pun intended). As for the most provocative claim, that Houdini died on October 30th and not the 31st (hence the "died twice" title), I have long believed there could be something to this. But I'm somehow now less convinced of this than I was going in. Maybe it was just one cover-up too many.
There is a lot here to absorb, and I will definitely revisit this book when it comes time for me to tackle Houdini's death in my own books. Thankfully, that is still years away. Maybe by then a smoking gun will have emerged, or we will realize this was all smoke and mirrors.
But I encourage you to get the book and make up your own mind. You can buy Houdini: The Man Who Died Twice at Houdini True Crime and Amazon.com.
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Now I must decide between the monkey glands or the butt boil as the strangest fact I know about him… poor Harry - Abby Martin
ReplyDeleteI'm in the middle of Chapter 4 and so far I like it too! I'm panning for gold nuggets here and finding them. There's a passport photo of an older Leo that's incredible. I've never seen photos of him beyond his twenties. The hair is thin and the goatee is gone. The photo of Major Samuel White, Bill's son, was another shocker. Apparently he had been taking care of his aunt Gladys for some time. Hardeen's gambling addiction resurfaces here as well. Had to skip the monkey gland chapter. Too graphic for me, but it solved the mystery of the hospital with the Cecilia Weiss wing.
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