Alternative-Read.com review of Houdini Pie by Paul Michel

June 25, 2010 - PRLog -- Title: Houdini Pie
Author: Paul Michel
Publisher: Bennett & Hastings Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-934733-55-4
Reviewed by Sassy Brit
Owner, editor and critic
Alternative-Read.com

It is heartwarming how when there's a war everybody pulls together, and Hal Gate's family is not much different. Only it's during 1920s Prohibition in the United States, his dad Charlie is head honcho bootlegger, Uncle Abe the networker, Uncle Warren the idea man, his mum the bookkeeper and ten year old Hal his dad's right hand man. Read lookout. Now that's what I call a family business! Until his dad does a disappearing act. A regular Houdini.

Tough times call for tough measures, as anyone who knows the bootlegging trade can testify. It's a risky life for young Hal with danger lurking around every corner and in between every case of booze. So when good fortune suddenly comes knocking at their door in the form of the Hopi tribe treasure, the spirit of adventure is summoned in a big, magical way.

Are there really ancient treasures and subsurface anomalies to be found? Or is it just an illusion; a big fat slice of Houdini Pie, just like Hal's mother during her crystal radio and Ouija board days?

From bootlegging to running a family business Houdini Pie is a quirky, fun read about the life and times of a boy growing up in California around  Prohibition. Sprinkling laugh-out-loud gems from his zany characters along with the harsh worries and dangers of bootlegging, Michel brings forth a world both funny and sad. Of people taking what joy possible from a bittersweet existence. While the story of Houdini Pie remains a slice of fiction, this book makes young Hal's idiosyncratic life as readable as any biography, with historical facts and real-life people who hunted for the buried gold of a 4000 year-old tribe of Lizard People. A welcome, old fashioned adventure tale with an intriguing narrative, partly set in a dank underground labyrinth with a little pastoral baseball thrown in, where people of 1920/30's Los Angeles and the mystical Hopi tribe are brought to life.

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