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.