Curious about how Houdini made an elephant vanish? Want to know how he walked through a brick wall? How did he manage to make all those great escapes? Unfortunately the author of this biography is a magician himself, so he has taken a vow not to reveal any of Houdini’s magic tricks. However, Sid Fleischman, who is accustomed to writing fiction, does an excellent job of captivating the reader. Fleischman tries his best to keep the story honest, but I think he had a hard time telling the truth about Houdini, when Houdini himself was rarely honest about himself and his capabilities.

While I was impressed with all the things that Houdini could vanish or escape from, I really wanted to know how he preformed all of those illusions. Hopefully this will lead the reader to investigate further in other works. The format for Escape was very nice. There wasn’t too much text to a page and it was broken up by photos, some that had never been printed before, playbills and other ephemera surrounding the Great Houdini.