ESCAPING FROM HOUDINI PROFESSIONAL

Another stunt saw him buried alive and only just able to claw himself to the surface, emerging in a state of near-breakdown. In 1904, thousands watched as he tried to escape from special handcuffs commissioned by London's Daily Mirror, keeping them in suspense for an hour. Soon he extended his repertoire to include chains, ropes slung from skyscrapers, straitjackets under water, and having to escape from and hold his breath inside a sealed milk can. He first attracted notice in vaudeville in the US and then as 'Harry Handcuff Houdini' on a tour of Europe, where he challenged police forces to keep him locked up. Extraordinary is memorable.” Like-minded readers will find Maniscalco’s latest foray into nineteenth-century forensic investigation anything but boring.įor more local book coverage, please visit, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.1891–1926 Harry Houdini (born Erik Weisz, later Ehrich Weiss or Harry Weiss Ma– October 31, 1926) was a Hungarian-American illusionist and stunt performer, noted for his sensational escape acts. As one member of the Moonlight Carnival muses, “Normal is boring. And yet 'Escaping from Houdini' is also a love story, one in which Audrey Rose’s love for the charming and stalwart Thomas is tested by the exhilarating freedom represented by Mephistopheles’s unorthodox lifestyle. Young adult readers of crime novels will thrill to Maniscalco’s labyrinthine plot and the gruesome secrets it reveals. “Murderers tried fabricating scenes, manipulating them to cover their true intentions and identity.” Nevertheless, it is her job to solve the mystery and unmask the murderer, even if it means destroying the magic of Mephistopheles and his performers in the process. “Crime scenes were filled with their own sort of sleight of hand,” she realizes. He employs scientific methods to produce illusions, while she uses them to reveal the truth. But the more time Audrey Rose spends with Mephistopheles, the more she finds him brilliant, alluring, and a bit of a kindred spirit. More: ‘CSI’ lands in Victorian London in Kerri Maniscalco’s ‘Stalking Jack the Ripper’Īs the week drags on, the luxuriously appointed Etruria begins to feel like “a floating prison” or “a metal dragon, flying low over the sea.” The sails resemble “the wings of some enormous sea creature hunting fresh meat.” And the covered passageway by night is “more akin to an open mouth, waiting to chomp down on guests.”Įveryone is suspect and no one feels safe. More: Knoxville's Kerri Maniscalco delivers monstrous thrills in Victorian-era YA novel

To allow myself complete and utter freedom to soar.” When invited by the performers to try the trapeze, Audrey Rose admits its attraction: “In this moment I understood the draw of the carnival - the magnetic pull to run away from restrictions and simply let go.

Easier said than done for a young woman whose choices are almost completely dictated by her station and her family but who is nevertheless determined to pursue a scandalous profession. To get close to him, Audrey Rose must shed the reservations of a proper Victorian lady without falling completely under her suspect’s dangerous spell. It seemed no matter where we went, death followed, and like greedy misers, we stored data away, profiting in a sense, from loss.” This weeklong voyage is no different: before the first evening is out, a young woman is murdered, and Audrey Rose and Thomas must begin a new investigation.

ESCAPING FROM HOUDINI PROFESSIONAL

Books is expanding as it continues to thriveĪudrey Rose describes the pair’s professional collaboration: “ and I were well-versed in our macabre roles, having practiced many times in more than one country. More: Despite the digital age, Union Ave. Maniscalco will discuss 'Escaping from Houdini' at Union Ave. The passengers include teenaged forensic scientist Audrey Rose Wadsworth and her partner and love interest, Thomas Cresswell, who have come straight from the site of their latest bloody adventure - Dracula’s castle in Romania. 'Escaping from Houdini,' the third volume in Kerri Maniscalco’s YA murder mystery series, opens on New Year’s Day 1889 aboard the RMS Etruria, a transatlantic ocean liner sailing from Liverpool to New York.

Escaping from houdini