Glaswegian conjurer William Wilson hopes his run of bad luck has ended when he lands a string of shows in Berlin. The theatre specialises in erotic cabaret, so with the help of the alluring and enigmatic Sylvie, he develops a new routine with a kinky, burlesque twist. His signature piece, 'the bullet trick', is an overwhelming success, but before long a mystery drags him back to Scotland, where it appears that a bullet trick may have claimed a real victim. Stage magic may be an unoriginal premise for a murder mystery, but Welsh mixes a heady cocktail of death, desire and illusion in quick, sharp prose. Full of wickedly dark humour, this is a deliciously decadent tale, served with plenty of thrilling tricks and turns.
The Observer
Welsh evokes the spangled world of Berlin nightlife so skilfully – not to mention mastering the minutiae of stage magic – that the action never flags for a minute.
Sunday Telegraph
Few contemporary novelists write as well as Welsh, and fewer British writers stand equal to her narrative ease . . . keeps its secrets and tricks and, above all, its reader hectically on the run.
Irish Times
Louise Welsh is the great hope of those wishing to bridge the gap between literary and genre fiction . . . her prose cracks along seasoned with a memorable phrase-making acute observation [and] exemplary theatrical timing.
The Times
The Bullet Trick’s description of decline and misery is utterly convincing . . . Welsh’s account of Wilson’s failure to grasp Sylvie, the novel’s erotic core, is purposely maddening and moving.
Times Literary Supplement
Reaches new depths of depravity and scales new heights in crime writing. . Seedy back-street magic clubs are the perfect setting for Welsh’s writing - the most noir of any novelist I can think of writing today.’
The Herald
An outstanding follow-up that will surely bring her fame and fortune.
BCA
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The Bullet Trick
(Canongate Books Ltd; New edition, 1 Feb 2007) buy
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
Extract as .pdf file
Louise speaks about the novel:
The Bullet Trick came to me in a recurring dream, a nightmare really. A man and a woman face each other across an empty warehouse, the man raises his arm, points a gun at the woman and fires. I’d wake up wanting to know why they were there and what happened next. Eventually, after a while spent in Berlin watching cabarets and interviewing showgirls, long nights ploughing through histories of conjuring and a session on a rifle range, I managed to figure the story out. It was as dark as I’d feared. Instead of curing my nightmares, it added to them.
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