The Zig Zag Girl by Elly Griffiths / Reviewed by Kelly Saderholm
Killer Nashville Book of the Day
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Elly Griffiths
Warning! Once you pick up this book you will not want to put it down!
The Zig Zag Girlby Elly Griffiths takes the reader to England, as Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens is confronted with the gruesome remains of a young girl discovered in the “Left Luggage” office at the Brighton train station. The body, which someone has slashed into three pieces and placed in separate cases, reminds the Inspector of “The Zig Zag Girl”, a magic trick invented by his old friend, magician Max Mephisto.
It is no accident that the girl was killed on Stephen's turf—the answer to this mystery lies in Stephens’ past, and with “The Magic Men”, a motley crew with whom Stephens and Max served during the second World War.
Author Elly Griffiths gives readers well-developed and compelling characters: Stephens may be (endearingly) naïve and young for a DI, but he is a far cry from the stereotypical bumbling police officer, and Max, the charming rouge magician, proves to have surprising depth.
Griffiths pulls the curtain aside to give readers a behind-the-scenes peek at the world of stage magicians in post-WWII England, and the slowly decaying vaudeville circuit, threatened by the emergence of a new medium: Television. As Stephens searches for clues, he—and the readers—learn that when Magicians are involved, nothing is as it appears to be.
The Zig Zag Girl is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and a sequel, The Demon King, is currently in the works. Elly Griffiths is also the author of the prize-winning and highly acclaimed Ruth Galloway series.
Kelly Saderholm has written, blogged, and lectured about aspects of the mystery novel. She has moderated panels and presented papers at literary conferences, on both the Mystery Novel and Urban Fantasy. She is currently shifting from writing about mystery fiction to writing actual mystery fiction, and is working on a novel, as well as a non-fiction book dealing with Folklore in the American South. She is a recipient of a Kentucky Foundation for Women grant. She lives in South Central Kentucky with her family and two feline office assistants.
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