English Mysteries Club discussion

This is the thread to discuss The Zig Zag Girl by Elly Griffiths, which has won the poll for August.

It is the first in the Brighton Mysteries Series, which has 7 books so far!

Reading and discussion begins on 1st August and continues all month. Who's in for this one?

Thrilled that my choice won. Very excited to read this with the group 📚 🐿

I'm glad this won, it was already on my TBR radar and I'm looking forward to it. A copy is already on it's way to me and I'm hoping it'll arrive by Saturday so I can pick it up.

Bionic Jean wrote: "This is the thread to discuss The Zig Zag Girl by Elly Griffiths, which has won the poll for August.

Reading and discussion begins on 1st August and continues all ..."
I'd like to join please. I read the book a shirt while ago but remember it well.

Feel free to post your non-spoiler comments anytime Dorothy 😊
Looking forward to reading your thoughts

This read begins today. A new series - how exciting! 😄

I’m in! Was tickled to see my digital library platform Libby had the ebook so I could borrow it, open to read in my Kindle app, and purchase the Audible for narration! Can’t wait to get started!!!

Great! I've ordered it on a library DAISY disc too!

I enjoyed “The Zig Zag Girl” and how magic and murder were intertwined in the 1950’s in Brighton, England.

Sounds intriguing!

Started reading it and really enjoying it!

Hope you all enjoy reading this. I have read and enjoyed all seven books in the series.

That's a great recommendation. Thanks Annie!

I've just downloaded the kindle version and plan to start reading today.

I've just borrowed it and started to read. Edgar Stephens seems to be an interesting character. I like how the author created him. I'll keep reading...

I am almost finished this book. I loved the authors style of writing and I will read more books by Elly Griffiths.
I did take awhile to develop an interest in the storyline but coming now towards the end of this book I am interested and enjoying reading this story.
Lovely English writer.

I'm glad this is proving popular!

I have a question, please. I have it on audio, but tend not to enjoy these if there are graphic descriptions. Somehow they are not as disturbing on the page/kindle. How would anyone say this one falls between extremely graphic and cosy?

Bionic Jean wrote: "I'm glad this is proving popular!

I have a question, please. I have it on audio, but tend not to enjoy these if there are graphic descriptions. Somehow they are not as disturbing on the page/kindl..."

I don't think I'd call it extremely graphic. The murders are pretty gruesome, especially the first, but the description isn't minutely detailed. With the first victim, the detail that's the most disturbing, to my mind is the reference to 'clotted blood and smell of decaying flesh', and that doesn't strike me as excessive. I found the fact that the author referred just before this to, 'The beauty of the face and the flowing blonde hair', more of an error of judgement. It struck me as a failure of imagination. I think the body parts had been in their box for three days, so the appearance of the face would have been horrific, not beautiful.

I found this aspect of the author's approach to the scene more off-putting than the degree of graphic description. Apart from the contradiction in those two examples quoted above, Elly Griffiths strains after a hard-bitten, sardonic tone, and a style of humour to match in the early chapters. The account of the first murder victim leads to what I feel is the worst example of this when Edgar is having a beer with Bob Willis and says of Solomon Carter, the police surgeon, that he 'was just about to proposition the girl ... he wouldn't be put off by a little thing like her middle section being missing. Probably likes his women like that.' I think this is supposed to be dark humour, but the thing is that dark humour still needs to be humorous, and this isn't.

That's really helpful, thanks Mike 😊

We will start listening while we have our lunch, and see how we go!

Hi Jean
My thoughts; tending towards cosy rather than graphic.
I enjoyed the gentle storyline.

Just finished in audiobook format and enjoyed it! I had a bit of trouble getting into it at first because I was expecting a lot of fast-paced mystery solving and it felt slow. However, it turned out to be a lot more character focused and quite different and enjoyable after getting used to the storytelling. A good first book to set up a series in that way!

I thought The Zig Zag Girl was a good read. The plot and characters held my attention. I thought it was well structured overall, although it became rather slow moving at some points around the middle. I think the account of Tony's funeral and Edgar's visit to his mother could have been cut, for example. Another structural aspect that I found a bit distracting was the switching between Edgar's and Max's point of view. Did anyone else find that? Could it have been reduced a bit? I thought the build-up of tension in the final chapters was good, and I really liked the twist at the end. And I thought the gradual introduction of information about the Magic Men and Inverness was very well handled.

As I mentioned in my earlier reply to Jean, I was a bit put off by some of the dark humour and the sardonic, hard-bitten style in the early chapters. Fortunately, that aspect dropped out of the writing style quite soon.

On the whole I thought the content, the presentation of the murders and how they were committed, and the methods by which Edgar and Max solved the riddles, were well done, although I did have a few quibbles about one or two details. Firstly, in chapter 13, when Edgar and Max visit Major Gormley and he tells them about the young woman journalist who questioned him about the Magic Men (which was Ruby, of course) they don't ask him for a description of her, and so don't identify that it was her. That seemed a little odd. Similarly, when they are so keen to trace Ruby, but don't have her address, they don't think of trying to find her parents in Hove. They know the surname: French.

I found the circumstances of Tony's murder a little difficult to believe. Even though he was drugged, it would be extremely difficult to get him inside the wardrobe and there would surely be considerable noise. Desdemona was in the house. Plunging a sword through the wooden door of the wardrobe would also make a great din, if it was even possible. The wardrobe is described as large and wooden, and the sword is a replica, so how sharp would it have been? A bit later the door's described as 'flimsy', so perhaps that's offered as an explanation.

I wonder if these few points that I found a little implausible might be an aspect of the 'cosy' element in the genre. 'Cosy' is a term that's new to me, but I've picked up that it refers to a less gory and horrific approach to the subject. Can it also indicate a greater willingness to suspend disbelief?

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Struggling to post
Sorry- This was a tedious & boring book for me mainly because I really wasn’t engaged with the characters and the subject- of illusion tricks put me off . So though competently written, characters I didn’t engage with around in setting I have no interest in its at best 2 stars from me .

Really enjoyed this. Elly Griffiths writes brilliantly. She immediately pulled me into the story & the characters. Now I must hunt out the second book in this series.

Yesterday I loaded our Aug The Zig Zag Girl on my Kindle app, and was eager to get started this morning, so I finished breakfast, got my vitamins out to take, and started the Audible narration on the first chapter. Yikes! I’m like, “I don’t think I picked the right time to do this!” 🤣🤣🤣 Oh well. I’m “police procedural murder mystery” tough, and listen to “Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan” podcast reinforced! I can handle it!

I'm at 15% I think - part way through ch 9 now.

Mike - I agree with your first thoughts. (For your second post, I began to wonder if there were spoilers so skimmed it. If there are, could you put them under a spoiler tag please? Thanks.)

It seems to have slowed down a little. In fact we have not even begun to explore who the killer might be! We are very involved with the magic tricks, so

Lesley I can see why this might turn you off. I'm enjoying that aspect, and it reminds me of the TV series "Jonathan Creek", if you ever watched that. But I hope we make some progress on the murder mystery soon. Of course it might be much better on the page, as listening is slow.

Debbie - I too was worried with that first line and thought oo-er! Not sure about this. But Elly Griffiths writes so charmingly that it almost feels artificial - like a prop - and not like a dismembered body at all!

Like Trish, I would say it tends towards the cosy, but is more original than some. So far it's not formulaeic

Mike - Like you, I had never heard the word "cosy" for fiction prior to Goodreads, and actually it wasn't a word I could ever expect to use. Or at least not for something I enjoy.

But perhaps in all crime novels (not just cosy ones) we have to have a greater willingness to suspend disbelief? Otherwise we wouldn't be able to handle it?

I'm watching a old TV series called "Wire in the Blood" at the moment, and it is extremely graphic, but I like the stories. The characters are based on Val McDermid's. In general though I prefer not to see the murder close-up - or even the body - but to concentrate on the puzzle. So dramatisations such as "Midsomer Murders" (Caroline Graham's characters) or many of Agatha Christie's work well for me! The more explicit ones I might have to watch through my fingers 😂 and could not imagine listening to, whereas reading does distance us a bit.

Bionic Jean wrote: "Debbie - I too was worried with that first line and thought oo-er! Not sure about this. But Elly Griffiths writes so charmingly that it almost feels artificial - like a prop - and ..."

I’m really enjoying the feeling of effortless reading that I experience when reading a book that really interests me!

I love the MI5 connection between Max and Edgar, and the idea Max is very bright despite his feeling like his fortunes are swirling around the ceramic drain of life.

Bionic Jean wrote: "Debbie - I too was worried with that first line and thought oo-er! Not sure about this. But Elly Griffiths writes so charmingly that it almost feels artificial - like a prop - and ..."

Point taken about spoilers. I had thought that members engaging in the discussion would have finished the book already, but I see that's not the case.

Regarding a willing suspension of disbelief, I take your point about the importance of regarding the stories as fiction. The stories we comfortably read for pleasure would not be pleasurable at all if the events were true. I was thinking more in terms of the realism of the events, though. It's a long time since I've read Ruth Rendell or P D James, but as far as I recall, the events in their stories unfold in a way that the reader can think, ´Yes, that is how it could happen in real life.' There were some points in The Zig Zag Girl where I didn't feel that was the case.

Mike - oh yes, those two authors were once my core reading for crime. I wasn't sure why, but I found them engrossing so perhaps you are right that "their stories unfold in a way that the reader can think, ´Yes, that is how it could happen in real life.'"

Re. Spoilers - if you prefer you could put at the beginning that your comment contains spoilers for the whole book. Some people do come on here after they have read it.

Just finished The Zig Zag Girl and loved it because it held my interest the whole time, I liked the characters, and although my intuition was right about who was behind the crimes, I didn’t have the satisfaction of knowing I’d nailed it until very late in the book, so it kept me wondering until the end. Early on, not realizing this was a series with recurring characters, I’d wished that Max and Edgar could be involved in a series, which I find they are! Yay! I liked the book so much, I checked to see how many digital copies my library had, and found they had volumes 1, 2, 3, and 6, so I picked up 4 and 5 myself, and plan to enjoy the whole series. When #7 arrives here in the states, I’m going to request my library add it!

That's brilliant Debbie - wow 5 stars! Thank for telling us and I hope you enjoy the others just as much 😊 We must remember this author for future group reads.

What I'm enjoying most is the authentic period detail, oddly! It really makes me feel I'm there, involved with the conjuring in a small seaside town in the 1950s. Elly Griffiths doesn't seem to put a foot wrong ... the only time I noticed a mistake was when a female character wanted to make a decision and said "I'm over 18!" But at that time the voting age etc. was 21, and I remember from my childhood when people would say "I can do what I like; I'm over 21," for making all sorts of questionable decisions, so the colloquial saying lasted quite a while. She's spot on usually, but this was the wrong decade.

Bionic Jean wrote: "That's brilliant Debbie - wow 5 stars! Thank for telling us and I hope you enjoy the others just as much 😊 We must remember this author for future group reads."

♥️

I just finished and enjoyed the book so much, I'm eager to start the next in the series. I'm curious to see where the author will go with this!
I loved the likable characters, and the atmospheric setting. I also enjoyed the creepy sense of foreboding that ran through the story.

It's brilliant that so many of you enjoyed this one! (I'm not quite half way through yet). Who nominated it? Come and take a bow 😁😆

I finished The Zig Zag Girl last night. Interesting and captivating. I must say that at first, I was a bit reluctant with that slightly too bloody crime, the woman sliced into three. But then the story caught my imagination. I loved how the author created Edgar Stephens. A very special detective. I really enjoyed it…How he tries to unravel the mystery of the murders and the connection between the victims. How Edgar's reasoning goes in parallel with his thoughts and frustrations from his personal life. In a way, it made me think a bit of the classic Inspector Morse. Also, Max Mephisto is an interesting and complex character..
I also liked the return into the past with that Magic Men war story and the relationship between them. An catching story with an unexpected end. Definitely a good reading…

I'm enjoying the Magic Men war story too Mihaela, and can't figure out how it will connect yet. Thanks for your comment! Are others finishing too?

Technically we are moving on to another read now, but I'll leave this current for a few more days as usual, to allow people (including me this time!) to catch up.

My personal thanks to whoever suggested this one - I'm enjoying it immensely 😊

Thanks Jean, glad you enjoyed it 😊