Kindle British Mystery Book Club discussion

the notion of the magician's trick of misdirection of the audience is mentioned so often that one realizes quickly that the story of Ruby is the author's clumsy attempt to do just that.

It doesn't work. Then you look at what other woman (because the culprit is small, slight with small hands -- obviously a woman dressed as a man) was featured anywhere in their history and the answer is discernible early on.

I was attracted to The Zig Zag Girl because a principal character, Max Mephisto, was based on a real English stage magician, Jasper Maskelyne, who’d led a specialist unit during the Second World War creating illusory weapons to fool the enemy, such as papier-mâché tanks & wooden cannons. But this book is not just one historical mystery, but two. The main story is set in 1950, centring round Brighton. But there’s also a backstory set some ten years earlier, featuring an army deception unit stationed in Scotland called The Magic Men. Someone is committing murders involving former Magic Men, murders using methods derived from stage-magic tricks. Max finds himself joined with an old comrade, now a Brighton police detective, in the quest to find the killer, chasing round seaside holiday pleasure piers & variety theatres.

This is a big change for the author, who’d been specialising in a series featuring an academic forensic archaeologist, Ruth Galloway, set in Norfolk near King’s Lynn, one of my favourite towns. I think the author needed a change of scene & some new characters, but have mixed feelings about this one. Her recreation of the culture & mores of 1950 struck me as accurate & the allusions (such as to Milton Berle, whom even @ age eight I found intolerably unfunny) spot on. But the WWII story was simply impossible to square with historical fact. A GR reviewer, Ron Kitchin, has already pointed out some howlers. I’ll add that in the totally unlikely event that a British army unit (even one as oddball as this one turns out to have been) had been commanded by a WRAF, she’d have held the rank of flight officer, not captain. Reviews of Elly Griffiths’ The Ghost Fields have also pointed out a number of mistakes, so I hope she will have any future ventures into military history vetted by somebody who knows the stuff.

Some readers said it was easy to spot the villain, but that was not true for me because the perpetrator & motives were too off the charts to imagine. They depended on wartime events that never would have occurred. But tho’ I care a lot less for English popular culture than British military history, I found the ‘50s story engaging & expect lots of us might well enjoy this new series, especially as an attractive new character & relationship is introduced. This was a good story; I wish it had rung true.

I identified the culprit when it was obvious that the flower buying “man” was a woman. There was no other woman to chose from, as Ruby would have been too obvious. So then I figured that Charis wasn’t dead

And you are right, Bill. The whole War depiction had too many errors to be believable And was it believable that they would have set up a unit like that whose sole purpose was to catch the spy?

I was disappointed by this as I really like Elly Griffiths', Ruth Galloway series. I found the whole female "officer" from a different branch in charge of their unit unbelievable. I immediately guessed that Charis had not died and that she was the killer. There were too many references to magic and misdirection to buy Ruby as the killer, she was an obvious, heavy handed attempted red herring. I also didn't find any of the female characters to be particularly well developed, they were all pretty one dimensional.

I think there were some good ideas. The magic trick connections, the ideas that them murders relate to a group of men who worked together during the war and have since gone their separate ways, but it just didn't work well in the book here as a whole.

Totally agree with you, AngryGreyCat! The premise was good .... this author just did a terrible job putting it together as a believable mystery.

It is surprising as Ms griffiths does a good job in her other series. Why did she fall flat with this one, I wonder?

Beth wrote: "Totally agree with you, AngryGreyCat! The premise was good .... this author just did a terrible job putting it together as a believable mystery.

It is surprising as Ms griffiths does a good job i..."

I was really surprised by how poorly put together this was. I guess the historical time period is just not her strength, but there were other problems as well. Perhaps her publishers were pressuring her for the book and it was rushed out?

I have encountered other authors in which I really enjoy one series and find another of theirs unreadable, Lawrence Block is one. I loved his Burglar (Bernie Rodenbarr) books, but tried his Kellar series and didn't even get 100 pages in on the first book.

Definitely there are historical errors and one wonders if she even researched info on the war!

The idea that variety shows were on the wane after the war was correct and I did feel some degree of empathy for Max Who knew his days were numbered.

Variety shows on the wane and television rising.

Worked out whodunnit very early on - perhaps I've read too many mysteries where the small man is really a woman?
I nearly bought into the notion that the title itself is a misdirection - until I remembered that Chapman - ZigZag - was so named because of his behaviour, not that it was a common term for a double agent. So the final raison d'etre for the book got dropped into the same muddy puddle as a lot of the rest of the background. Ho hum.

I agree, Christina. Very ho hum and I won't be rushing out for the next in the series