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