THE ZIG ZAG GIRL

Elly Griffiths Quercus

BRIGHTON, 1950: Detective Edgar Stephens is investigating a grisly murder.

The body of a woman has been found cut into three pieces and stuffed into boxes at the railway station.

The bizarre case reminds Edgar of a conjuring trick, “The Zig Zag Girl,” whose inventor, Max Mephisto, served with him during World War II in a mysterious army unit called The Magic Men.

Together, DI and magician explore Brighton’s seedy showbiz world in search of the killer.

Elly Griffiths’s novel is hamstrung by a slow pace and some clichéd characterisation. But her writing has a sly, macabre wit.

In the morgue the victim’s legs “lay primly side by side, still clad in flesh-coloured stockings, cut off mid-thigh as if by a prudish censor.”

– The Independent