The content of this book deserved four stars, but was brought down one star by poor editing.

The premise of the book is interesting. Lynne Kelly discusses a bunch of supernatural/paranormal/magical phenomena ranging from levitation to seances, from mind-reading to UFOs. She then discusses common-sense reasons for how these apparently out-of-the-world phenomena are actually easily explained by a mixture of simple trickery and human psychology. While many of the “mysteries” are caused by self-delusion, she gives “recipes” for reproducing many others, which makes the book pretty interesting.

However, I have to complain about the editing. It wasn’t tight at all – the book could have been 1/5 shorter (there were some especially obvious repetitions). Most egregious of all, there are numerous references to non-existent photographic plates. There are no photos in this book, or if they are, they’re leading a very ghostly existence. They were probably taken out as a cost-cutting measure and the text not edited for this after the fact. Too bad.

To sum up, this book is well worth a read. I’ve not seen so many different topics debunked in a single book before. But it’s let down by the editing so be prepared for some teeth-gnashing while you plow through the book’s excesses.