The Magician's Tale

Kay Farrow #1

by David Hunt

When the police find the decapitated head of a young man with the body nowhere to be found, they are stunned. They begin to piece together the clues and soon find out that the head belongs to Tim Lovesey, a handsome prostitute who worked in the seedy section of San Francisco called Polk Gulch. In this sexually charged neverworld, the police prefer to look the other way and chalk this up as another bizarre crime in an equally bizarre area of town, setting the premise for The Magician's Tale, one of the summer's most chilling thrillers.

Kay Farrow, a professional photographer who was working on a photo book about the hustlers in the Gulch, is the only person who seems to care about the grisly murder, and she proceeds to investigate further, hoping to get to the bottom of this strange crime. Kay, an achromat suffering from an extreme color blindness, possesses a unique vision that informs her world as well as sharpens her skills as a talented photographer.

During Kay's quest for justice, the search takes her back in time to an unsolved serial murder case. This case has many similarities to Tim Lovesey's murder, but the police proceedings are what strike closest to home with Kay. Her father was one of the officers on the case and due to police mistakes the case was never solved, resulting in Kay's father getting ousted from the police force. Kay's further investigation of the murder takes her to Tim Lovesey's "uncle," who tells her the interesting tale of Tim's magician past. Kay learns more about Tim's mysterious history and discovers how he was teamed with his twin sister inamagic act that lasted for most of their childhood.

Risking her life and everything she holds sacred, Kay must sort through the riddles of the past and present before she can uncover the truth in Tim's death. Along her search she faces potential mental and bodily harm as her colorless vision shows her shades of lust, greed, jealousy, and desire.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Thriller, Suspense, Crime, Magic, Contemporary

401 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 16, 1997

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Pseudonym of William Bayer

Reviews

[Bondama · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a drop-dead fantastic read, with a brilliant premise: the heroine is a photographer who, because of a genetic abnormality, can only see black and white: no colors at all. Spellbinding and really well written.

[Bart · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author's ambition exceeded his skill with this story which is overwrought and undertold. It's interesting for a good portion of its total length, but then the writer can't seem to quite bring it all home.

I would not recommend this to most people.

[Floor tussendeboeken · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ik had moeite om me er doorheen te worstelen. Elke kleine alinea was een totaal andere scène wat ik erg afleidend vond. Sommige scènes hadden wat mij betreft weg kunnen blijven want die waren wel erg willekeurig.

[Lukasz Pruski · Rating 4 out of 5]

"'That, my dear, was the best part! Brother and sister! Like Tristan and Isolde. The depravity of it! The absolutely scrumptious degenerate depravity!'"

When I was a child I could never understand the saying "too much of a good thing." I considered it one of million stupid things that the grown-ups used to say. How could there be too much of a good thing? Well, David Hunt's (which is a pen name for a really good mystery/thriller writer William Beyer) The Magician's Tale (1997) is a great example of there being too much of a good thing in a novel. While the same author's Switch is one of the best procedurals I have ever read, perhaps not quite lean enough but at least relatively well focused, this novel tries too pack way too many goodies. Like a cake can be overfilled to nauseating effects with delicacies - raisins, almonds, figs, nuts, and others - this novel offers dismemberment, magic, sex trade, twins, pedophilia, serial killers, photographic art, bread making, generous helpings of depravity, and even autosomal recessive achromatopsia (check it out in a medical dictionary).

The narrator of the story is Kay, a single woman in her thirties, an award-winning photographer specializing in portraying the people and situations in San Francisco's "Gulch." This is an area of sex hustlers, chicken hawks (older men interested in much younger ones), and sex transaction brokers; in a neat phrase it is the center of "alternative sexualities." Kay is street smart, knows virtually everybody in the area, and cruises the San Francisco's Gulch and Tenderloin districts with her Contax camera.

One of her friends, Tim, a young and beautiful hustler, whom she used to photograph, has been killed and dismembered. Kay is needed to identify the body parts; she befriends a female detective, thus allowing the author to relate the investigation from Kay's point of view. Connections to a serial killer case from the past emerge and - to further increase the complexity - the reader learns that Kay's father, a policeman, had been involved in that case.

The Magician's Tale is still a very good book. First of all, I love the highly accomplished prose:

"[...] there's the fragrance of wild fennel and night-blooming shrubs mixed with the resin scent of the Monterey cypresses that compose the woods around Coit Tower. I'm so accustomed to viewing this place from a great distance through a lens that I'm surprised by the intimacy this sweet aroma conveys. Suddenly I feel heady. [...]"

The long passage depicting Kay's photographic session with Tim is a piece of serious literature subtly evocative of erotic undercurrents. Furthermore, the author succeeds in conveying the specific San Francisco's sense of place:

"I like the Castro, its parade of purpose and flamboyance, tank tops and tattoos, tight asses, pert tits, piercings, muscles, leather, flesh."

And of course there is the magician's tale, the story within the story. Those of us who, unlike me, read books for the stories they tell, will love it.

Highly recommended novel, but it would have been so much better had the author deleted half of it! Or, even better, why not make two novels out of it? There is enough of the "scrumptious degenerate depravity" for two books!

Three-and-three-quarter stars.

[Nicolas Chinardet · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly engrossing tale of murder and dark impulses. A real page-turner of a book, very nicely written with a endearing collection of characters. Some of the minor characters were particularly successfully drawn in my view. Hunt also manages to make San Francisco a welcome part of the story. I picked the book by complete chance and was most pleasantly surprised by it. I've order the sequel.

[Kirsty Darbyshire]

Partway through this I thought it might turn out to be one of the most stunning mysteries I'd ever read but I felt it trailed off a bit towards the end and perhaps went on a little too long to acheive its full potential

The gimmick here is that the narrator Kay Farrow suffers from an achromatic eye condition which means that she can only perceive shades of grey and no colour at all. She makes her living as a black and white photographer and is following a group of street children and sex workers in San Francisco as material for her next book. One teenage boy she gets very close to turns up dismembered and Kay feels that no one will investigate his death properly if she doesn't.

This is a cracking story on many levels, great descriptions of San Francisco, some very interesting characters, a fascinating premise for the story and a central character with a disability that becomes part of the tale and isn't just a hook to hang a moral on. I'm glad to learn that Hunt has written a followup book Trick Shot that also features Kay as I'd like to see her again but this did feel very much like a standalone.

[Laurie Stevens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most all reviewers I've read of this book hone in on the San Francisco elements of this book and the fact that the main character is color blind. I'd like to hone in on the unusual writing style of the author. At first, I thought something was snagging my attention because it's a male author writing from a female prospective, not unusual... I'm a female and write from a male POV The Dark Before Dawn, but then I figured out that wasn't it. Mr. Hunt isn't sounding necessarily masculine in his writing, it's more a detachment of sorts. Funny thing is, is that it works. You are looking at world of white, black, and gray; and here is this writing style that completely correlates to it. It sets the tone of the book and stays a constant companion to you as you read. No spoilers here -- I won't tell you what it's about. Only that it keeps your attention, and that monochromatic feel is unusual and refreshing.

[Krait · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in San Francisco, The Magician's Tale is told though the eyes of a colour-blind photographer, Kay Farrow. After her favourite photographic model is murdered in what appears to be a street hustle gone wrong, Kay begins to use her street contacts to find out what happened.

The descriptions of San Francisco at night through black and white eyes is an eerily perfect description of this oft-times fog bound metropolis. And as Kay delves into the background of the victim, while trying to retain her street credibility, secrets slowly exposed about all the characters makes for an engrossing read.

[Shelly Bouchat · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was painfully slow and predictable. It really had great potential, but the writing just didn’t follow through.

[Chana · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought it had real potential. I liked the achromatopsia of the main character and her black and white photography. I liked her project to photograph the young men selling themselves on the streets of San Francisco. Her telescope, her dark room, her pursuit of justice with her camera; these were all things I found interesting about the main character. I also liked the twins and the magic, it was creepy, until it jumped the shark and became dark as h*ll. But in reality, who lets their kids go off with some man to learn magic. A good example, I suppose, of how the grooming of children and the adults responsible for them, works. The aspects of voyeurism and violence were what I didn't care for and ultimately I didn't feel I had any meaningful take away from this book.

[Moxy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I originally began reading the book when my old therapist gifted it to me, this book has since been an absolute favourite of mine. The story is so inthralling and detailed, it just sets you into the story as if you were an onlooker within their world! I would highly recommend this story.

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picked this up at the Salvation Army, got about halfway through and set it down for three months with no problem. So, obviously, this is a book you can put down. Or at least I could.

The story is good enough, but I couldn't get into the writing, or at least the dialogue. Too much of it seemed contrived, as when the newspaper editor (Kay's former boss)calls her "kiddo" every other sentence.

I also found that I had a hard time getting into the reality of the story. It may be my experience as having lived most of my life in the Midwest, with San Francisco seeming like an exotic locale (even though I've actually been there a few times). In between the time I set it down and picked it up again, I read "Mystic River," by Dennis Lehane, and I found Lehane's portrayal of the neighborhoods in Boston was far more believable for me than Hunt's San Francisco.

[Booknblues · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book of two about Kay Farrow a photographer who has an unustual color blindness in which she only sees black and white.
It is set in San Francisco and she has been working in the Tenderloin district photographing street people and prostitutes.
One of them, a gay male prostitute has been gruesomely murder.
He has been featured in her photos and she had hopes of including him in a book, so now she feels she must find out what could have happened.
Kay Farrow is a wonderful character and it is a shame there were only two books in the series, this and Trick of Light.

[Katrin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this several years ago and kept it; planning to read it again to see how it holds up. This fiction murder mystery tells the story of a young woman photographer with extreme color blindness, investigating the death of a friend in San Francisco. I remember it as being very interesting and certainly different.
The author Nelson DeMille says, "if you like your thrillers atmospheric, kinky, and brooding, then ... is right up your alley."
Katrin

[Mila · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the description on the back cover of this book, and I'm glad I decided to follow that up, because I love this book. Good writing, good characters, good plot which wasn't rushed at the end (a pet peeve I run across all too often). Given the setting, I'm surprised this was a best-seller, but hey, it was probably good for a few people to get a glimpse of this milieu as seen in a sympathetic light.

[Lisabet Sarai · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this atmospheric mystery up at a used book sale and really enjoyed it, largely because of the unusual heroine, a punkish female photographer with a congenital vision problem that prevents her from seeing colors. She's a bit like a vampire, most comfortable at night, since bright light blinds her. Fascinating. The tale revolves around the murder of a young male prostitute, and the city of San Francisco is practically a character. Recommended.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I enjoyed this book more than Trick of Light. Following the same character who has; achromat: she suffers from total color blindness, a much more serious (and much rarer) condition than the red-green variety.
A murder happens with a person she had been photographing and the story gets deeper from there.

[Rain · Rating 5 out of 5]

i am probably wrong to rate it so highly seeing as i read it many years ago.but even though i can't remember everything about it,it was a good book and id love to read it again.wait,since I'm still thinking about it after all these years,maybe it is worth all the stars.
true case of disability standing out as a blessing.

[Alice · Rating 2 out of 5]

The answer to the mystery is sick. Too sick for me to really stomach. Actually, its not just the mystery, its the background on the slaughtered character. And why I do think that the main characters ailment is interesting, its too bad that's the only interesting thing about her. Just blah, and too self aware, and just irritating.

[Idyllwilde · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books. The main character, Kay Farrow, is completely unreachable; this usually turns me off immediately. But the story grabs you and holds with an...pardon my lack of originality...iron fist. It is cold, hard and rather scary but very, very good.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wordy, but the turn of phrase is beautiful. I tried to read this a few years ago, and didn't get through the first two chapters. I gave it another chance and I'm glad I did. Excited to read the next one!

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an Amazing book the writer makes you see the world in both black and white and in extra vivid colors. I like how the writer gave the pov of the heroine considering his a man .. Love this book so much

[William Witt · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read that held my interest. Logical with interesting characters that I almost cared about..

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

A complex story of sex trade business and police corruption.

[Dena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book! Couldn't put it down! A must read.

[Laura (crofteereader) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this book was a little ambitious. I really like the unconventional narrator: full black-and-white color blind photographer playing at being a private investigator (particularly when her disability is not only regularly acknowledged but a key part of the story). I like the setting: post-AIDS epidemic San Francisco in the LGBT street scene, with all the peculiar limitations of 90s life (landlines and payphones and lack of instant Google-generated gratification).

However, there are four distinct plots being interwoven: a 15-year-old serial killer cold case, a brutal copycat murder, several attacks staged against the protagonist, and the murder victim's hypersexualized and enigmatic sister. And while these do all end up tied together about 50 pages from the end (which made the actual end feel like such a drawn-out and unnecessary stretch), throughout most of the book these threads are so tangled up together that it's so hard to focus on whatever the present moment is.

I think I want to read the second book in the series mainly because I did like the way the protagonist and setting were handled and would like to give author David Hunt another shot.

[Bhue · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found these books by David Hunt (a pseudonym of William Bayer) years ago and loved them. The first, "The Magician's Tale" is followed by "Trick of Light." Sadly there were not anymore written in the series. I was recently delighted to find mint,signed first edition/printings of BOTH books on VJBooks.com (a great place for quality signed first editions).

I cannot write any better synopsis of the stories than have already been outlined in Goodreads and yes, the first was the better of the two.

As to having a "Koontz-like" feel? Let me put it this way. Unlike a book by Dean Koontz, you will not need a lobotomy to enjoy it. And at the end you will not need hospitilization for a diabetic coma or from gagging on golden retreiver fur.

[Jaime Robles · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mystery set in San Francisco. It follows the case of a young gay sex worker, who was killed on the edge of the Tenderloin. The “investigator” is the man’ best friend, a young photographer. Born with achromatopsia, the most severe form of color blindness, the photographer finds extreme light debilitating, but her inability to see any kind of color allows her an oddly unique way of seeing the world, one in which shape and texture are the dominant ways of separating objects from their setting and from each other.

A shade kinky, but not repulsively so. Hey! It’s a mystery.

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was gifted to my street library and was I book I probably wouldn't have come across otherwise. I found its sense of place appealing, though I have never been to San Francisco I felt able to sense its layout and geography, both human and environmental. The premise of a totally colour-blind photographer worked well and the descriptions of the people of Polk Gulch, the drug affected and alcoholic largely, were realistic to me. Perhaps the plot was a somewhat overwrought, but it was good diversionary reading, a murder mystery with a difference.

[Tiffany Freeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book as a teenager and i fell in love. I have read this book multiple times and it always seems so captivating to me. I get buried in it and the world around me disappears. It is so descriptive and I have always said this is my all time favorite book. I can still see the vivid images of what I pictured as a teen. This is one book I will NEVER forget. If you haven't read it yet make sure to add it to your reading list. It's for sure a 5 star read!!!!