I enjoyed it overall and the characters were fairly engaging. It really sagged in the middle and it took me a while to get around to finishing it. Worth a read but needed more excitement.

While the first series by Elly Griffiths featuring Ruth Galloway has been on my TBR list for a couple of years I still haven't started reading it. When I was looking for a book with at title that started with Z for this year's What's in a Name Challenge I found this one at the library. It's the first in another series by Griffiths. This one is set in 1950 in Brighton, England. Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens and magician Max Mephisto served together during World War II in Inverness, Scotland in a special unit known as "The Magic Men". Now, they are brought together by a murder case involving a young woman who was dismembered in a gruesome imitation of a famous magic trick of Mephisto's known as The Zig Zag girl. Soon there is another death and the murders seem to indicate that the members of The Magic Men might all be targets of the killer.

I enjoyed this one well enough. I figured it out fairly early on but the story was interesting and the characters were enjoyable enough that I didn't mind continuing to the expected conclusion. Max and Edgar make an interesting investigative team. The present day investigation is interspersed with flashbacks to the wartime work of The Magic Men. Parts of the story are clearly not believable and while I learned a lot about the two main characters, I never felt I really got to know them. Despite that, it was entertaining enough that I'll probably read the next book in the series.

I've seen reviews that indicate this series is not as good as the Ruth Galloway series so I'm definitely looking forward to starting that one.

It was an okay read until the end. The ending was annoyingly predictable and way overdone. Also, there were a few details at the end that were explained but still didn’t make sense. It just didn’t work.

3.5

As a fan of many of Elly Griffiths' other novels, I couldn't resist picking up 'The Zig-Zag Girl' - who can resist a book combining murder and magicians?!
This was a really refreshing book - fast paced, humorous narrative, and likeable characters. I got the impression that it's the first in a series, and if so, look forward to picking more up.

I really enjoyed this 1950s era mystery. It centers on two unlikely friends, DI Edgar Stephens and stage magician, Max Mephisto. Edgar has been assigned a strange case where an unknown woman has been cut in three, mimicking the sawed in half 'zig zag' woman Act that Max does. The torso was delivered directly to Edgar's office with his former military rank on it. He tracks down Max to ask about the trick to see if he can figure out why someone would do this and how. He finds Max with a new, temporary assistant, Ruby. Edgar really likes Ruby but she quickly disappears from their lives. Max, now forty-something, is beginning to wonder about his nomadic stage life as variety shows are starting to fade with the advent of TV and movies. He reluctantly agrees to help Edgar. All too soon, they realize that the victim was a former assistant of Max's.

The signs begin to point to their wartime adventures as part of the Magic Men. They were a group of illusionists who tried to trick the Germans into thinking there were more tanks, ships etc than there really were by using props (there were actual attempts at this in the war). The actual magicians were Max, Tony who like Max is a bit of a womanizer and more than a little egotistical, and the Great Diablo who is much older (at least seventy if not older in the present day part of the story). Edgar was there because of his quick intelligence and code breaking abilities and the Major, a military lifer, ran it under the control of a WAAF officer, Charis. Bill, the carpenter/props maker did most of the building.

As the story flips back and forth from past to present, we learn more and more about what happened in the war, especially to Charis whom Edgar loved and lost in a fiery attack. And the more likely it is the current murder has something to do with their past, especially when others die. Edgar and Max have to find a killer before anyone else dies.

I really liked both Edgar and Max. I will say that I would have liked it better if Edgar's men were more supportive of him and more efficient or if we at least knew why they seem to resent him. I half figured out the killer and why but there needed to be a bit more motive, in my opinion. So, more like a 4.5 read for me but I rounded up for the speed I read this at and how late it kept me up at night. I'm looking forward to the next one and would like to find the author's other series.

Well written, but utterly predictable.

Läs min recension på bloggen: https://www.fiktiviteter.se/2021/06/18/the-zig-zag-girl-av-elly-griffiths/

Entertaining enough throw away murder mystery set in the world of variety entertainment in the 50s. I figured out who did it and why fairly early on so I got to enjoy feeling smug when it was revealed haha.