This superb novel is richly textured and intellectually challenging, a tour de force from our most elegantly seductive writer. The last magician is Charlie, the photographer, who monitors and records everything as he seeks the silent Cat through physical and emotional infernos. Charlie, Cat, Robbie and Catherine shared a childhood summer in a Queensland rainforest. But a death intruded on their charmed circle, binding them to complicity and silence. Decades later, festering memories seep through into the present, in the same way as the desperate underside of a corrupt Sydney breaks through into tidy lives and well-kept streets. The Last Magician was listed in the Weekend Australian Most Notable Books of 1992 and the New York Times Best Books of 1992.