Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Ambitious Card | 2013 | Eli Marks | Buy |
| 2 | The Bullet Catch | 2014 | Eli Marks | Buy |
| 3 | The Miser’s Dream | 2015 | Eli Marks | Buy |
| 4 | The Invisible Assistant | 2016 | Eli Marks | Buy |
| 5 | The Linking Rings | 2018 | Eli Marks | Buy |
| 6 | The Floating Light Bulb | 2018 | Eli Marks | Buy |
| 7 | The Zombie Ball | 2019 | Eli Marks | Buy |
| 8 | The Last Customer | 2020 | Eli Marks | Buy |
The Eli Marks Mystery series by John Gaspard follows a magician in Minneapolis who keeps finding himself at the center of murder investigations. Each of the eight books is named after a classic magic trick — The Ambitious Card, The Bullet Catch, The Linking Rings — and the world of stage magic provides both the setting and the investigative framework.
Eli is not a detective by profession. He is a working magician whose trained eye for deception and misdirection makes him better at reading crime scenes than most amateurs. The series ran from 2013 to 2020, with The Last Customer closing the run. The magic trick titles give each book a thematic hook, and Gaspard uses Eli’s craft knowledge to create mysteries where things are never quite what they appear.