I couldn’t have been more than three years old when I first heard the name Houdini. My grandfather, a grave digger, amateur magician, and a man with a morbid sense of humor, was obsessed with the man and talked of the legendary escape artist as if he was a god. On numerous occasions he would take my grandmother, my sister, and me to visit his grave in Machpelah Cemetery, outside New York City.  There, in front of the grand alabaster tombstone, Grandpa would perform sleight of hand and we would picnic on oranges and sausage.  

Needless to say, my grandfather impressed on me a lifelong fascination with the “handcuff king.” Of all the books I’ve read over the years on the famed escapologist, The Secret Life of Houdini by William Kalush and Larry "Ratso" Sloman is by far the most entertaining and fascinating. Culled from millions of pages of research, the authors chronicle his young life as Ehrich Weis, a locksmith’s apprentice, to his early gigs as a struggling magician to his history-making, death-defying stunts that made him famous. Along the way, the authors contend, Houdini worked as a spy for the British and United States government. Spy, you say? These accusations were only hinted at in past bios, but here the authors make convincing and spellbinding arguments that the great escape artist was also a spook (reinforced in the preface, written by former CIA director John McLaughlin). We’re also given insight into Houdini’s relationship with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a good friend who became a bitter rival, and how Houdini’s crusade against false mediums led to death threats by a group of fanatical Spiritualists. Were they involved in murdering Houdini?

It seems that Kalush and Sloman's has created quite the stir.  Houdini's great nephew, George Hardeen, is now calling for the magician's remains to be exhumed and to see if he was, as the authors contend, indeed poisoned.