Review by Sandy Huseby
Kay Fowler is not the typical spunky female sleuth. But then, nothing about "The Magician's Tale" is as it seems.
She sees the world with the eye of the black-and-white photographer, because she has a unique disability. Achromatism, total color blindness, leaves her sensitive to the light of the day. Where others see fields of color, she sees the subtle nuances of shadow and form in tones of gray.
In searching for Tim Lovsey's killer, she must confront aspects of her own past she's not yet reconciled. Lovsey's murder is hauntingly familiar to a serial killer her cop father sought years earlier.
David Hunt is the pen name of Edgar-winning mystery writer William Bayer, whose home ground of Russian Hill and the environs of San Francisco, are captured with "color" and sense of place.
This is a face of San Francisco the tourist board won't advertise, yet a hauntingly provocative one. The novel resonates with tonal clarity that compels the reader to see with new eyes.
As Kay Fowler herself observes: "I feel like a widow returning to a city where a great romance was born, hoping to find the same beauty in the streets, finding instead only piercing loneliness."
"The Magician's Tale," as the title promises, is woven of sleight of hand and deception and dark magic. Kay Fowler's vision helps her find her way past that deception as she seeks to solve the ultimate mystery.
David Hunt's writing gift is every bit as deft as the magician's tale he weaves. How wondrously ironic that a novel based on darkness, on the stark, colorless world inhabited by Kay Fowler, should resonate with vividly colorful characters and place.
Sandy Huseby is a writer who divides her time between Fargo, North Dakota, and Nevis. She is online at S Huseby@aol.com.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.