Fingerprints - Anthony Harle
£6.99 ebook from direct from
http://www.blurb.com/user/store/hds02115 Anthony was kind enough to send me a review copy of this book, and despite the fact that mentalism isn't really my thing I found it really rather illuminating.
Fingerprints is ostensibly a mentalism effect though I think it could be played as a number of different styles of magic because of it's simplicity. There are a couple of sample routines given but to be honest the method is universal enough to be applied to almost any theme.
There are a number of effects where several pieces of paper are handed out to different people and when randomly collected back in, you use some kind of secret mark or memorised tear pattern to discern who had which one and trace whatever they wrote back to them. This is like that but without the secret mark. If this were an ellusionist trailer, I would add "No marks, no tears, no crimps, no notches."
Your spectator could examine their piece of card with a microscope, infrared goggles, uv lights and a mass spectrometer and find no discerning feature to it, and you can make these cards really REALLY easily. If anything the instructions go into more detail than you need (though they are lovingly presented).
I'd be willing to bet though that with sufficient practice you could even return the cards back to their original order blindfolded, which oddly is never suggested in the book itself.
The method behind it is blindingly simple. If you're one of these youtube kids who complains about disappointing methods (Like literally, how can a method be disappointing if you liked the effect?) you'll hate this because of how deceptive such a simple method is. Go buy a box of magnets held together with wax and IT, losers. I love this kind of method, and I love that it's something you can make yourself when you know how.
If mentalism is your thing, this is for you. End of. You can probably use this method to improve an effect you already do and if not, you can certainly add a bit to your routine with it. I'm not a mentalist but I'm planning to play around with this to see if I can apply the method to something similar.
Honestly, if I hadn't received a review copy, it's not the sort of thing I'd have bought, purely because I'm not into mental magic, but if I was this would be well worth the asking price. It might yet prove its worth to me if I can figure out a presentation which is more 'me', but without knowing the contents I wouldn't have been drawn to it. So thank you, Anthony.
I give it 7.5 out of 10.
That may seem low for something I praised so highly, but it's because I think maybe he went to print a little too early. If a non mentalist like me can think up new ways of using this method it suggests that there's much more ground yet to be covered with this technique.
- Stacy