The Bullet Trick - Softcover

Brilliant second novel. Destined to be even more successful than her half a million copy-selling debut thriller The Cutting Room. The Bullet Trick is both funny and tragic, with an extraordinarily gripping plot and a wonderful cast of shady characters. * * Daily Mirror * * The atmosphere of this novel... is intoxicating. Dark, seductive decadence and nostalgia nestle under a dirty blanket of grim expectation. The two strands of William's life... are spliced together with alternate chapters set before and after his nosedive. This serves to heighten the tension to near-unbearable levels... You want to do the impossible and look away, but to do so would be to miss what could be the best and most intelligent crime novel of the year. * * Waterstones Quarterly * * If your idea of a relaxing read is a thriller that keeps you awake all night, you need to go no further than home-grown talent. Louise Welsh's new novel, The Bullet Trick, is about a down-at-heel conjuror who gets sucked into the seedy glamour of the burlesque scene, with dangerous consequences. * * The Scotsman * * Louise Welsh draws us into the half-light existence of cabaret performers in The Bullet Trick. * * Vogue * *

When down-at-heel Glasgow conjurer William Wilson gets booked for a string of cabaret gigs in Berlin, he's hoping his luck's on the turn. There were certain spectators from his last show who he'd rather forget. Like the one who's now a corpse. Amongst the showgirls and tricksters of Berlin's scandalous underground Wilson can abandon his heart, his head and, more importantly, his past. But secrets have a habit of catching up with him and, as he gets sucked into certain lucrative after-hours work, the line between what's an act and what's real starts to blur.