The Warlock Effect: A highly entertaining, twisty adventure filled with magic, illusions and Cold War espionage

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The period atmosphere and the Cold War detail feel like a Le Carré but it’s the characters you really care about. This story has everything you need to keep you turning the pages, I learnt so much and I can still remember those 12 words. I didn’t receive a free proof copy of this book unlike most of the other reviewers appeared to have done. Man about town, denizen of Soho's nightclubs and cabaret bars - and the most skilled magician of his time . Perhaps its chief pleasure, though, is simply the magic it contains, from the beginner's card tricks .

Cue the first third, an enjoyable British vintage take on "Now You See Me", as the whole machinations of getting the trick completed are revealed, in something like real time now and again. He is sent behind Soviet lines into Czechoslavakia to investigate the sinister ‘Funhouse’, where it seems magicians can even fool magicians.The cold war era of the late 1940s through to the 1980s seems an especially appropriate stage for stories that pepper espionage with something even more shadowy – be that occult magic, the stagecraft of illusionists or investigation into psychic powers. RYAN'The period atmosphere and the Cold War detail feel like a Le Carre but it's the characters you really care about.

Mr Aldous, editor of Illustrated, who has previous history with Louis, challenges him to prove his magic is ‘real’.When a shocking, plot-terminating event occurs almost halfway through The Warlock Effect, it’s not just the prospect of another 200 pages to go that alerts the reader to narrative trickery.

Yes, it's about magicians and espionage in the Cold War, however, what is not made clear anywhere is that the protagonist is Jewish and is burdened by World War II experiences in his formative years. Man about town, denizen of Soho’s nightclubs and cabaret bars – and the most skilled magician of his time . What this left me with was the feeling the period was very well evoked – even if it dropped in details, like a Mickey Finn as a spiked drink, and more, that made me wonder if anachronisms hadn't been made.When he comes face to face with a nemesis whose cunning rivals his own, Louis will need to use every trick in the book – or risk the most terrible consequences, both for the country and for himself. As another reviewer put it: "I didn't feel anything like as overwhelmed by this tricksiness as expected".

The postscript to the scene, however, reveals Bond’s double-dealing… he is playing with a stacked deck, every card the Lovers, which he casts to one side mid-clinch. Pouring their joint obsessions with comedy, magic and horror into this novel, authors Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman take the reader into a realm of secrets and betrayal. Dyson said: “We grew up in an era when you had things like The Amazing World of Kreskin on TV at lunchtimes and Uri Geller, and these things were presented to you as something that was absolutely real.We're at the end of 1952, and Louis Warlock is in the middle of a mind-reading trick his love of magic since his childhood makes very easy for him.