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3.0 out of 5 stars
A shaggy-dog tale-cum-train wreck., May 25 2009
Nothing irks me as a reader as much as a wonderful premise ruined by a bad execution. The same situation strikes fear into the heart of the writer in me. 'Nevermore' sets new standards in this regard.
So you have Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry Houdini, Edgar Allen Poe, spiritism, murders, sexual intrigue, all of this set against the backdrop of the United States during one of its most vibrant and fascinating periods (the 20s)...
...and *this* is the best you can come up with?!?
There are moments of pure joy in this novel. Some lovely interludes of literary pleasure. Hjortsberg clearly did his research, he has flashes of entertaining deftness of touch...but I don't think he ever really gets a handle on his material, never really creates what so clearly there was available to be created. (In fact, the most skillful parts for me were two brief sections dealing with sex. And I'll leave it at that.) I wasn't impressed with his characterizations. At all. Yes, liberties were taken, certain license was used, but considering what he had at his disposal, it's like he got cold feet when telling the tale...or he never really had a good story to tell in the first place, merely a wondrous premise.
'Nevermore' could have been stunning. It could have been something in the same category and loft as 'The Alienst' or Jack Finney's pair of time-travel books. But it came up terribly short on all counts, saddening both the reader and the writer in me.
(But it still has the stuff of a great movie in it.)
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4.0 out of 5 stars
I Liked It, Dec 19 2003
Houdini and Conan Doyle are two of my favorite people from history. This story was fun and enjoyable. It reminded me of "The Alienist" quite a bit, too. It is fun stuff--spritualism, magic, illusion, detective work...all
happening during a great time in history.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Busy and not very flattering for Houdini, Feb 22 1999
By A Customer
William Hjortsberg's "Nevermore" brings together Harry Houdini, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a serial killer emulating Edgar Allan Poe's stories, and a host of real characters from the 1920s. Sherlock Holmes's creator is in the United States delivering a series of lectures on spiritism, and Houdini is playing his usual role as a skeptic. The two inevitably run into each other time and time again, and they form a friendship, one that is tried to some degree by their different philosophies. While they are going about their businesses, a killer is dispatching victims in ways that are taken from Poe tales. And at the same time, a woman calling herself Isis is performing supernatural feats that Houdini cannot explain away.If the story sounds busy, that's because it is. The various threads seem to coexist without mingling for quite some time. In fact, the serial killer all but disappears for a substantial portion of the second half of the novel. With the standard suspense aspect thusly diminished, the novel becomes more of a combination of a period piece and an exploration into the two men's obsession with supernatural phenomena. The historical aspect of the mystery often works well, though Hjortsberg does seem to revel a bit much in the minutiae of the period, from cigarette brands to characters. The supernatural aspect does not work, as Houdini is clearly the loser; there is never really any doubt but that spirits exist and influence the world. Also, it should be noted that Houdini's character, while heroic, is also decidedly unflattering, especially in his dealings with Isis. "Nevermore" begins with a great deal of promise but ultimately fails to fulfill that promise as the threads never mesh entirely satisfactorily. While Hjortsberg writes well for the most part, he never truly unites the several threads, and a few of them are left dangling.
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