.jpeg?picon=3103)
Written by Chris Moriarty
Illustrated by Mark Edward Geyer
Harcourt, 2011
$16.99, ages 9-12, 356 pages
A Jewish boy is plucked from the tenements of New York's Lower East Side to help catch magical criminals, only to find that he has to investigate the very people he loves, in this imaginative story set in the 1880s.
When 13-year-old Sacha blurts out that he sees his neighbor doing magic, the New York Police Department handpicks him to be an apprentice to their top detective, Inquisitor Maximillian Wolf, charged with preventing the misuse of magic.
This New York City is a magical melting pot, where every ethnic group has its own witchcraft and magic gangs. Although it is not illegal to be a wizard or Kabbalist, it is against the law to use magic for ill and the powers-that-be try to curb magic when they see fit, sometimes to their advantage.
J.P. Morgaunt, a manufacturing tycoon, wants to make magic obsolete for the working class so he can sell more machines. Without magic to do get things done, workers would have to rely on mechanical means. But he also thinks wizards like himself are above the law and should be allowed to use magic whenever they see fit.
Right from the start, Sacha finds himself in the thick of a criminal investigation. He and fellow apprentice, Lily Astral, are assisting Wolf in a high-profile case involving the attempted assassination of Thomas Edison, the Wizard of Luna Park. And the alleged culprit? A dybbuk. The demon from Jewish folklore who takes over a human body.
But who has summoned the demon to go after Edison and why? Morgaunt, the Wall Street wizard, is accusing the great magician Harry Houdini. He says Houdini has good cause to thwart Edison's latest invention, an Etheric Emanation Detector or Soul Catcher, which would fingerprint people's souls to see if they contained magic.
Morgaunt, who commissioned the witch detector, contends Edison's invention would expose Houdini for the fake he is. He says Houdini's act is done with magic, not illusion, and that if Edison were able to finalize the detector, it would instantly identify Houdini as a spellmonger and
0 Comments on 10. The Inquisitor's Apprentice as of 1/1/1900
Add a Comment