The 1920s: a time of unprecedented belief in "spiritualism", or the practice of ostensibly communicating with the spirits of the dead. Into this milieu stepped Rose Mackenberg, a private detective trained by the great magician and escape artist, Harry Houdini. Her mission: to investigate and expose "ghost racketeers" who used magic tricks and psychological manipulation to con bereaved people out of their hard-earned cash. "Houdini's Girl Detective" is an illustrated anthology of Rose Mackenberg's original 1929 newspaper article series, detailing her sometimes hair-raising adventures exposing the chicanery of the ghost racket.
You can purchase Houdini’s Girl Detective: The Real-Life Ghost-Busting Adventures of Rose Mackenberg at Amazon.com (U.S.) and Amazon.co.uk (UK).
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Has anyone read this yet?
ReplyDeleteI'm deep into Bob Loomis' new book at the moment. This one is next.
DeleteI'm currently deep in Dave Kaplan's The Chairman. It's the sequel to Volume 1 of his two part Frank Sinatra bio...oh dear, wrong blog...
ReplyDeleteI almost zapped this as spam before I saw it was you posting. :p
DeleteHa! Between Kaplan's book and Eduardo's Houdini bio, I feel like the book reviewer for the New Yorker...
Deleteon page 85, Mr. Wolf misidentifies a photograph of Dunninger as one oh Houdini.
ReplyDeleteJon Oliver
Indeed. That's Dunninger. As this is a print on demand, he could easily fix that, and then we all would have the rare "error" edition. :)
DeleteSo Houdini trains his agents including Mackenberg to use chalk for signalling. Do we know where Houdini learned this method? Or is it assumed to just be a field expedient?
ReplyDelete