The reader first meets young Jake O'Sullivan, the protagonist, in 1912 Montreal, where his father is a washed-up boxer in hock to a small-time Jewish mobster. Jake has had a lifelong obsession with the escape artist, Houdini, after seeing the famous magician perform one of his stunts. Flash forward to 1929 when Jake is now a young man performing dangerous stunts himself, one of which includes stealing a mobster's moll. Lulu is gorgeous but fickle and causes Jake no end of problems, requiring other sorts of tricky escapes. The dark underside of Montreal during this period is deftly rendered, with its steamy jazz clubs, zinc bars and "a Negress blowing through an alto saxophone." Eventually, Jake takes on a smuggling job with a nervous little Frenchman that goes horribly wrong, and Jake and Lulu are soon running from the law as well as the lawless. When things settle down, Jake manages to pull off a nifty combination escape stunt and bank job. Here the story goes slightly off the rails, with the appearance of girl named Bobby and a journey to New Orleans, but, altogether this is a well-crafted novel, especially in its period details.