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The Effect
From the cover:

Prepare to be intrigued, delighted, elated – Random Acts of Magic is an inspired and inspiring collection of more than 60 brand new, bread-and-butter goodies, tightened and refined over thousands of shows, lectures and television appearances! You’ll find astonishing tricks with cards, coins, markers, cell phones, matchbooks, matches, receipts, elastics, bottles, balls, bills, wallets, ties, spoons and finger rings, plus anecdotes, road stories, and the first 12 hilarious, thought-provoking essays from David’s column in Genii magazine! Plus much more

Cost
£29.99 from http://www.magicworld.co.uk/magic-shop/ ... ductid=147



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)
Varies, 2-4 I'd say.



Review

I have not really seen much of Mr Acer in action, but this book sounded interesting so I took a chance on it. I bought it last December and have only just got round to reviewing it now, but it's a well written, well-illustrated book full of effects that can be used.
The first half is called The Extrovert At The Card Table and quite logically focuses on card effects. There are some goodies here with contributions from other magicians such as Jay Sankey.
One of the good things about this section is that he explains the sleights within the description of the effect, rather than assuming you know them, which is rather useful as some of them are unusual ones and not widely know such as Looey Simonoff's 'Flippant'.
Rather than being a dry magic manual, Acer writes with a tongue in cheek wit which I found to be rather enjoyable and more human than a lot of robotic moves listed in a bland fashion.

The second section, Magic by Mister Direction is enjoyable too and has coin effects, some mentalism and an effect with Trivial Pursuit cards. All workable and all fun to do.

I really enjoyed David's columns from Genii at the back of the book. Funny and informative.




Overall

Although there are no "stunners" in here, the magic within is solid and good for anyone's act. David's style of writting is funny and natural and the photo's show the sleights every move and are easy to follow. Expensive for thirty quid, but a worthwhile book for magicians, particularly card fanatics. A couple of these I have performed on a regular basis to a good response.

8/10

Nice review Freddie, i dont have this book, but i do have some of Acers other material. I think i saw him on TV when i was a kid, im pretty sure it was BBC2, on a show called something like 'Drop the white rabbit' (???)
Anyways, i have since bought his Road Killers video, which also stars Richard Sanders, and i think the stuff on there is very similar to this book. Great tricks that will fool people badly, and usually the methods very devious, and not too difficuklt technically. ( some nice coin stuff on there from Sanders too)
I seem to remember one trick in which a phone is pulled out of an empty envelope which i used a few time to great success. Sounds like i may be ordering this book....

It's a good buy, Atomo and he explains the sleights involved rather than just referring to them and some are quite obscure. It's well written and his style is witty.
I do like the effects in here and I have modified some with my own variations. There's a great use of the rub-a-dub vanish and two magicians in here too.