The Fingerprint Trick

Many years ago I purchased “The Vernon Chronicles” and “The Dai Vernon Book of Magic”. I don’t know whether I was intimidated by the slights required, suffered from a lack of vision or just plain lazy, but I did not do much work at all from them. Maybe I thought I would become a better magician just by having them in my collection.


Fast forward to last August. I am so thankful that I had the wisdom to acquire these books. (If not the motivation to work from them). For the past 5 months I have been studying these and a few other books. Of course I knew and understood who Dai Vernon was and his standing in the magic community. But I never fully appreciated his genius until this year and my reimmersion into magic. For the past few weeks I had been working on “Ace Assembly”, an earlier version of Vernon’s “Slow Motion Aces”.


I felt like I needed a good 4 Ace trick in my repertoire. Since I was a kid I have been doing the version found in Bruce Elliot’s “Great Secrets of the Master Magicians” It’s a good trick. But I loved the idea of the aces traveling one at a time. Once I started working on it I realized this was going to take some serious time. I would continue to work on it but in the mean time what to perform on Friday? The Fingerprint Trick is in the same book and while I skimmed the effect earlier I looked a little more carefully into it. It did not take long for me to realize how strong this one could be. No freaky sleights, interesting plot and of course the “Vernon Touch”:
That is, straight forward and above board (seeming) handling. I had a few days to work the trick out and write my own script for it. I added a simple prop for 3 reasons. To create more interest, involve more spectators and most importantly, as a cover for the world’s clumsiest classic pass.
The first performance I totally screwed up. I lost count during the turning cards phase. It was no disaster since the chosen card was found as one of the five Candidates. I brought a back up just in case. The Rising Cards. I thought briefly about temporarily chucking The Fingerprint Trick and doing something easier. But in the end I decided to continue with my original plan. I’m glad I did because the rest of the performances were amazing! I did not expect the shouts at the final revelation of the chosen card. This is another winner! I love it! I am really learning to build effective routines from classic books and make them my own. There just is no feeling like that of artistic accomplishment!