The Zig Zag Girl: The First Brighton Mystery -- Elly Griffiths

<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 pl