About this item
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 whos 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 killers sights. "Enormously engaging . . . Griffithss plot is satisfyingly serpentine." - Daily Mail "Readers will finish looking forward to the next trick up [Griffithss] sleeve." - Mystery Scene
About the Author
Thank you for visiting my Amazon author page! I'm the author of two crime series, the Dr Ruth Galloway books and the Brighton Mysteries. Last year I also published a stand-alone, The Stranger Diaries, and a children's book, A Girl Called Justice. I have previously written books under my real name, Domenica de Rosa (I know it sounds made up) .The Ruth books are set in Norfolk, a place I know well from childhood. It was a chance remark of my husband's that gave me the idea for the first in the series, The Crossing Places. We were crossing Titchwell Marsh in North Norfolk when Andy (an archaeologist) mentioned that prehistoric people thought that marshland was sacred ground. Because it's neither land nor sea, but something in-between, they saw it as a bridge to the afterlife; neither land nor sea, neither life nor death. In that moment, I saw Dr Ruth Galloway walking towards me out of the mist...I live near Brighton with Andy. We have two grown-up children. I write in a garden shed accompanied by my cat, Gus.
