Alakazam by Mia Dalia

Publisher – PS Publishing

Published – Out Now

Price – £18 hardback £2.99 ebook

What is the greatest trick of all—survival or disappearance? How far would you go to find out?

In the heyday of Atlantic City, a man determined to rise above his circumstances and make a name for himself in a world hostile to people like him, finds his calling in the art of illusion.

In the present day, two friends pretend to be interested buyers to gain access to the house where a famous magician once lived — before mysteriously vanishing.

Once the night falls, all secrets will be revealed... to those who dare cross the threshold of Alakazam.

GO ON, SAY THE MAGIC WORD!

How far would you go to change your life? How far would you go to uncover a decades-old secret? In an abandoned house, built by ambition and sustained by dark magic, fates cross—and past and present bleed through.

One deadly night. One trespass. Finding the way in was easy. Leaving it alive will take a hell of a trick...

In a world where sadly magic is not real the conjuror is still something that fascinates audiences even today because they hint, just hint, we might be wrong. Magic may be real. It is also the challenge we know this cannot be actually happening, but can we explain why? Where should I be looking on the stage? The legends of magicians on the stage such as Houdini are even more thrilling as they worked in a time without computers and any such easy visual effects. In Mia Dalia’s great atmospheric horror novella Alakazam we watch two young men seek out the legend of one such magician but also get to see the real man behind the mystery and find more questions need to be answered.

In the ever-deteriorating Atlantic City two friends have made a road trip to see the ruins of Alazakazam. The home of Archie Bowman who is better known to fans of stage magicians as The Amazing Archibald. A man known for being one of the best on stage but who rarely in his career left the City and one day vanished from public sight. As an overly keen realtor shows them this strange home the two hatch a plan to finally find the secrets of Archibald, but few know the real secrets the man was hiding.

This is a wonderfully smart piece of storytelling and has a touch of the stage trick to it as well. We start with our unseen narrator a mildly grumpy young man reluctantly going with his verrry keen friend Logan to this house of legend which on the outside isn’t up to much. Dalia captures Atlantic City’s sense of decay and lost glory (I suspect Blackpool is our U.K. equivalent!), this teases the question what was The Great Archibald’s secret.

We then get a weaving storyline moving from the house visit to the start of Archie’s career. His story is fascinating a man driven to do what he is good at but we also see a man who can’t actually be who he is. In the early twentieth country a mixed race gay man is not allowed to be on stage so the Great Archibald becomes his cover and perhaps the only way Archie feels he can ever be seen. Dalia shows the personal tragedies that drove Archie into this and these scenes have huge power and indeed the initial horror is all about the cruelty of the human race when people do discover Archie’s secrets in quite terrifying scenes.

But as in the modern day people explore the house known as Alakazam we find there may be one other secret. Archie gets saved by a man who says he can be the best magician ever. So the big reveal for the story is how did Archie do that? What was the cost? I’m not going to ruin the big reveal but as our two young men decide on a second trip to Alakazam I think we soon find this story isn’t quite what we think it is.

What can say is Dalia skilfully then links all these disparate elements together - a magician’s career and his determination to do better, young people’s curiosity and even the slow decline of Atlantic City as a tourist magnet into one single story’s finale and Gently reminds us that despite the human pathos, the young men’s’ sense of humour, and even a trip through history we are in a horror story and perhaps that was where we should have been looking. Highly recommended!