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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.
"Captivating."--Wall Street Journal
"An absorbing read, the debut of another great series."--San Jose Mercury News
"A labyrinthine plot, a splendid reveal, and superb evocation of the wafer-thin veneer of glamour at the bottom end of showbusiness . . . Thoroughly enjoyable." --Guardian
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.
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.
"Enormously engaging . . . Griffiths's plot is satisfyingly serpentine."--Daily Mail
"Readers will finish looking forward to the next trick up [Griffiths's] sleeve."--Mystery Scene
About the author
Elly Griffiths is the USA Today bestselling author of the Ruth Galloway and Brighton mystery series, as well as the standalone novels The Stranger Diaries, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel; The Postscript Murders; and Bleeding Heart Yard. She is the recipient of the CWA Dagger in the Library Award and the Mary Higgins Clark Award. She lives in Brighton, England.
