Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #110395 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Sometimes an author can make a considerable mark with their first book (as Louise Welsh did with The Cutting Room and almost immediately lose momentum with their next outing. The Bullet Trick is proof that Welsh is no one-trick pony, and this highly entertaining (if, at times, baffling) novel will be gratefully received by those who like their fiction eccentric and unabashed--Welsh doesn't shy away from presenting us with the more extreme forms of human behaviour, sexual or otherwise.

The protagonist here is a Glaswegian conjurer who has seen better days. Those who know their literature of the Gothic (and Louise Welsh is certainly of that number!) will no doubt spot that the author has christened her anti-hero William Wilson--the same name, in fact, as the luckless hero of the Edgar Allen Poe tale of sinister duality. Welsh's Wilson is desperate to escape from his crushing existence in Glasgow, and jumps at the chance to perform his conjuring tricks in the cabarets of Berlin. Leaving behind people who he most definitely wants out his life in this free and easy foreign city seems like the best move of his career. But Welsh implies that (like the Poe character with whom he shares his name), Wilson's real problems lie within himself, with the external danger he encounters a manifestation of the sickness in his own soul.

If the above makes The Bullet Trick sound like a depressing read, nothing could be further from the truth. This is exuberant stuff, floridly plotted and crammed full of the kind of over-the-top characters that we encounter far too little these days in most parochial fiction. It's also worth noting the Welsh's second novel could not be more different from its predecessor, and if she is going to come up with something quite distinct with every new book, that alone is going to mark her out from most of her contemporaries.

--Barry Forshaw

Denise Mina
"The tense plot twists artfully around its own ankles ... I'm so jealous I could spit."

Denise Mina
"I'm so jealous I could spit."

Customer Reviews

"Meine Damen und Herren. Mesdames et Messieurs...."
The Bullet Trick was BBC Radio Scotland's Book Club book of the month earlier in the year and having coincidently watched Caberet on DVD just a few days before I found myself a copy....What a great read!

Louise Welsh has crafted a seedy and gritty novel whose main characters I had an instant empathy with. It's a story that gains it's own pace before exploding into a surprise double ending.

The book evokes a certain Scottishness, with nod to Chandler's loner PI's and Caberet's theatrical review, that I really enjoyed.

A step down from the Cutting Room
I like Louise Walsh, the Cutting room was excellent and Tamburlaine Must Die intriguing. This novel is in the same style as the Cutting Room, and if you liked that, then this is worth a read.
I found the novel an easy read, and perhaps less dark and tense than previous novels, also it is a tad transparent; the ending I think was reasonably obvious, so there is loss of stars for that. But the story on the whole is good, if not a tad rushed at the end; the tension and suspense that was palpable earlier in the novel is dissipated a tad too quickly for my liking. Rankin is probably better at the tension and drawing this out as long as possible.
The main characters are good though and most are believable; although the police officers appear flat, perhaps this a problem that Walsh needs to look at; in the Cutting Room the secondary players in the story had no development.
On the whole I am glad I read this; but no prizes this time.

pap
How did this book manage to get such good reviews? It's not the intelligent or engaging novel that the cover quotes would have you believe. It is in fact a dull and very tedious story that is not engaging in the slightest. The plot is predictable and equally as poor as the characters. But the worst element is the dialogue; which is made up mostly of clichés, innuendo and very poor jokes.