Alan Attwood’s novel is a fictional account of escapologist Harry Houdini’s time in Melbourne in 1910.
In 1910, Harry Houdini, the world-famous Hungarian-American escapologist, arrived in Melbourne on a world tour. In its day, this was a showbusiness event on a scale comparable in our time with someone liketo occur in Australia. Competing against Houdini and his French Voisin biplane for that distinction was Lawrence Anderson, the patrician headmaster of Wesley College, whose machine was supplied by the Wright Brothers.
Houdini’s sojourn in Melbourne begins with a staged leap from Princes Bridge into the murky waters of the Yarra River. As he struggles to untie himself underwater, Houdini believes he encounters the submerged corpse of a woman. Identifying the body becomes a fixation for the man whose showbusiness career is dedicated to cheating death.
At the Hotel Metropole, an impressive building with an arcade that stood in Bourke Street until the 1970s, Puccini and Bess form an unlikely romantic friendship based on music. The composer, it seems, is seeking a muse, someone who will lead him to the leading character in his next opera. “The heroine is always at the heart of my operas,” Puccini tells Bess. “And always she is flawed, adored, and doomed. Though perhaps not this time. I am not sure how it will end, if it ends. Minnie is elusive.
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