The battle of wits that plays out between these covers is best read curled up under the covers. During a performance in Waterloo, Iowa, the Amazing Arden alters the highlight of her act and ends up chopping her husband in half—with an ax. For policeman Virgil Holt, there's little doubt that she has committed murder right in front of him, especially when he brings her into custody and spies suspicious bruises on her neck, only to decide later, that "she would never make up something so outlandish to sell him on her innocence." But, as readers know, outlandish is a magician's go-to tactic. Alternating between the long, cold night in 1905 when the two face off in a small-town jail and Arden's complex personal history, this is a book in which storylines twist, spiral and come together again in an ending as explosive as a poof of smoke from your chimney...or a top hat.
— Stephanie Klose
