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. The central character, Louis Warlock, is after all a stage illusionist who has already pulled off a seemingly impossible feat of mind-reading in front of a crowd of sceptics. Though Warlock likes to come across as a lone genius, behind his stunts lurks an invisible team of problem-crackers he dubs the Brains Trust. They include fellow magic- obsessive Dinah, a girlfriend he seems puzzlingly ambivalent about.
The West End stages and cabaret clubs of 1950s Soho are swiftly swapped for the shadowy corridors of the British secret service when Warlock is tasked with outwitting a visiting Russian mentalist. Hanikonikov has a list of British double agents hidden within a conjuror’s prop.
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