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I only have a few magic reference books with this one particularly referred to me by Peter Duffie....I can see why.

As a novice you want a guide to be clear and concise. The Card Magic of Le Paul delivers the best elements of all the most used and ultimately useful card techniques in words and pictures that really does get the desired point across. That is not to say that the material is easy...far from it. Some of the techniques will take some time to master but you never feel out of your depth.

After briefly covering the pass, concentrating on the turnover pass, the book then enters into the realms of palming, steals, lifts, changes, false deals, controls, shuffles and flourishes. It never bogs you down with TOO much information but covers enough to give you the weapons you need to feel confident to cover most sleight of hand situations.

The learning aspect of the book is backed up by 20 absolutely fantastic tricks. Rather than covering old ground with tricks that every man and his dog knows, the appendix has been thought out very well and for an "older" book ther tricks seem very fresh and not as dated as some in RRTCM.


Cost

I think it cost £14.99.....

Difficulty
(1=easy to do, 2=No sleights, but not so easy, 3=Some sleights used,
4=Advanced sleights used, 5=Suitable for experienced magicians only)

A strong 3...obviously there are sleights used but not so knucklebusting as some books out there.

Overall

I cannot recommend it enough...experienced magicians may not find it as useful as novices but I would imagine it would still make a welcome addition to someones collection just for the tricks alone.

Le Paul's style is very flamboyant and confident - with his main focus being on manipulations rather than sleights and magic.

Although, his sleights are beautiful, flourishes are crafted... he's an inspiration to many modern magicians. His close-up work, owing to his confident manipulation skills, are first rate.

I would agree that although this book is quite old, it's content as far as effects and tricks are concerned is actually quite a lot more upbeat than the now rather dated Hugard and Braue teachings.

The only way I would slightly disagree about BeerForDolphins's review (which is otherwise excellent) is that it is stated that the book is suited for novices... whereas I would recommend fully that a complete novice would consider the RRTCM before this book - as many of the things you'll learn in the Paul le Paul book is actual advanced techniques based on the techniques you'll have already learned elsewhere.

It must also be said that this book is quite well illustrated for the period in which it was written.

I agree that the book is not aimed at the complete novice (I should have highlighted that)...it DOESN'T cover basic card controls, shuffles etc like RRTCM does but once you have worked through RRTCM I think that this MAY be a decent next step...especially for the tricks!

It is indeed a good next step - as the routines themselves are worth the price of the book alone.

The slightly advanced techniques taught therein are improvements rather than 'from scratch', and therefore I'd agree wholeheartedly that this is an awesome purchase for anyone ready for the 'next step'.

Where can i purchase this guys? Cheers

It is one of my favourite books. I can recommend it thoroughly.

Wild Card wrote:Where can i purchase this guys? Cheers

I bought mine from Magic Books By Post. They're under new management these days though so I'm not sure if they carry the range of stock that they once did. Worth checking though.

Very worthwhile book to own that (tellingly) the Ellusionist crowd wouldn't touch with a bargepole.

Thanks a lot for that, it's really supposed to be something!

Agree with the comments made about this suiting the more experienced card worker. Definitely not for the novice IMHO, the tricks found within make judicious use of pretty difficult sleights, quite a big step on from the overhand shuffle etc.

But what fabulous tricks they are!

Par example: 'Quadruple Coincidence' - four spectators take a card each and having looked at them, each card is replaced, the deck is shuffled between each replacement. The deck is ribbon spread and the spectators freely pull out a single card each. The magician then shows that the four cards freely selected are the same four cards that were chosen to begin with!

I am working on this and it is a tricky bu**er, but I'm sure it'll be worth the effort!

I have always loved the Paul Le Paul book but I take exception to the statement that the Royal Road tricks are "dated". Since approximately 50% of my card trick repertoire comes from the Royal Road I find this statement to be arrant nonsense. How can a bloody card trick be dated? The layman has no idea when the damn thing was invented or published.

Personally I never read books written after 1954 anyway.

As for Quadruple Coincidence I have seen Seth Kramer do it a different way that I quite approve of. Instead of finding 4 selected cards he simply finds the four aces which are at the bottom of the deck beforehand. It does speed up the trick a little.

How can a bloody card trick be dated?

Here here!

As Pete McCabe would say, it's all in the scripting.

Instead of finding 4 selected cards he simply finds the four aces which are at the bottom of the deck beforehand. It does speed up the trick a little.

So the spectators each pull out a card and they appear to be the 4 aces right? Great idea.

I like this book a lot, but I don't think that the descriptions of sleights are as clear as a more modern book would be. Perhaps this is because it was assumed that its original target market would be serious card workers rather than the wider audience magic books are available to today. In my opinion, the photos and text are not always quite as direct in explaining as they could be - compare with Giobbi or Metzner, or any number of current card books.

That said, the sleights must have been amazing when the book first came out, and it's surprising when you go through it how many things I learned from other sources were originally described by le Paul, and when I went back, found they'd been credited to him.

The book isn't expensive, and is definitely worth the money.

After only a quick skim of the book I can say, honestly, for its price, its worth it.

If you already have Erdnase, RRTCM and ECT, you wouldn't be doing yourself a major disservice by passing it up. And for the novice that doesn't own those three books, they should be referred to them instead of this.

This is a fantastic book. As Mark Lewis pointed out, I open my trade show set with "A Quadruplicate Mystery" with the aces produced instead of selected cards. It's a great way to get 4 people involved doing nothing more than pushing a card out of the deck.

In addition to this routine, there's the "LePaul Spread Pass" which is an excellent, well covered pass. "The Card in Envelope" is also explained in the book. It's the predecessor to all the card in wallet effects that magicians do today. It's still a great routine without the wallet. Roberto Giobbi has some great work on this routine.

For $15.00 USD, it's one of the best buys in magic.

Seth Kramer