The Zig Zag Girl

<strong>The chilling debut mystery in the Brighton Mysteries series from Edgar Allen Poe Award-winner Elly Griffiths--author of the Ruth Galloway Mysteries--about a band of magicians who served together in World War II tracking a killer who's performing their deadly tricks.<em><br/></em></strong><br/>Captivating.--<em>Wall Street Journal </em><br/><br/>An absorbing read the debut of another great series.--<em>San Jose Mercury News </em><br/><br/>A labyrinthine plot a splendid reveal and superb evocation of the wafer-thin veneer of glamour at the bottom end of showbusiness . . . Thoroughly enjoyable. --<em>Guardian </em><br/><br/>Brighton 1950. A girl is found cut into three sections and Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens is convinced the killer is mimicking a famous magic trick--the Zig Zag Girl. The inventor of the trick Max Mephisto served with Edgar in a special ops group called the Magic Men that used stage illusions to confound the enemy. Max still performs touring with ventriloquists sword-swallowers and dancing girls.<br/><br/>When Edgar asks for his help with the case Max tells him to identify the victim for it takes a special sidekick to do the Zig Zag Girl. Those words haunt Max when he learns the victim was a favorite former assistant of his own. And when Edgar receives a letter warning of another trick on the way he realizes that it is the Magic Men themselves who are in the killer's sights. <br/><br/>Enormously engaging . . . Griffiths's plot is satisfyingly serpentine.--<em>Daily Mail </em><br/><br/>Readers will finish looking forward to the next trick up [Griffiths's] sleeve.<em>--Mystery Scene </em>