Leo Brent Robillard’s new novel plunges us into the world of Jake O’Sullivan, a young boy growing up in a poverty-ridden section of Montreal. The year is 1912, and Jake’s father, Sean, is an alcoholic boxer working for a small-time hood named Israel Karpowicz. When Israel sends Sean to New York to pick up a package, father and son take a detour to Coney Island, where Jake witnesses one of Harry Houdini’s escape acts. Entranced, the boy immediately decides to teach himself the art of escape.

There is some sloppy writing in the novel’s early sections. Significant details are glossed over and certain scenes feel underdeveloped. However, the reader is apt to forgive some, if not all, of these transgressions, since the story moves along so briskly that they are often not noticeable until a second reading.

At Israel’s provocation, Sean loses a fixed fight and descends further into the bottle. Jake becomes a petty criminal and following his father’s death finds himself in Israel’s employ, running rum to the U.S. during Prohibition.

The plot proceeds through a series of increasingly implausible twists and turns, but we stay with it, allowing the author some latitude so long as he keeps propelling his story forward. This situation holds until the three-quarter mark, when, following one of the story’s more outrageous revelations, the narrative point of view inexplicably shifts away from Jake, who has been our guide through the bulk of the novel, and onto a character who, before this, has been peripheral at best. The transition is so jarring, and the reasons for it so wildly unbelievable, that the net effect is to squander whatever reserves of sympathy the book had accumulated to this point. From there, the story is left to play itself out, but the reader’s engagement, always so hard-won, has been lost.