Griffiths (The Ghost Fields, 2015, etc.) weaves a compelling tale rich with historical detail and a cast of eccentric...
A series of bizarre murders in post–World War II England appears to be connected to the Magic Men, magicians who were part of a special ops group during the war, in this whodunit set in the world of tricks and illusion.
It’s 1950, and Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens is settling into his new life with the Brighton police. An Oxford student before the war, Edgar was recruited by MI5 to join the Magic Men because of his aptitude for crosswords and codes. Including magicians Max Mephisto, Stan “The Great Diablo” Parks, Tony Mulholland, and a handful of others who made up the ragtag squad, the men—and one alluring woman—worked to play elaborate tricks on the Germans. Edgar thought his magic days were behind him until two trunks containing a woman’s dismembered body turn up in the Brighton train station’s left luggage area, the torso conspicuously missing. The next day, another case arrives at the police station, addressed to Edgar, with the missing torso. Edgar is convinced the killer is mimicking an old trick of Max’s where the magician pretends to chop his assistant into bits, the titular Zig Zag Girl. Edgar tracks down his old friend, who’s still performing, despite the public’s waning fascination with variety shows—television is on the horizon, after all. The pair identifies the dead woman as Max’s old assistant and, in a somewhat predictable but still engaging game of cat and mouse with the killer, tries to find the rest of the Magic Men before it’s too late.
Griffiths (The Ghost Fields, 2015, etc.) weaves a compelling tale rich with historical detail and a cast of eccentric characters.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-544-52794-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
Looks like Neal Carey, the peripatetic agent of that free- lance justice troop Friends of the Family, will never get back to New York to write his dissertation on Tobias Smollett. This time he's sprung from three years in a Chinese monastery (The Trail to Buddha's Mirror, 1992) only to be sent undercover as a ranch-hand in the Nevada plains to scout out the Sons of Seth, a white- supremacist flock that's his best hope for locating two-year-old Cody McCall, snatched from his Hollywood mother during a paternal weekend. Neal settles in deep, of course, and his ritual ordeals- -having to sell out the rancher who took him in, breaking off his romance with tough schoolmarm Karen Hawley, going up against rotten-apple Cal Strekker, getting ordered to kill his Friendly mentor Joe Graham—are as predictable as the trademark dose of mysticism as the bodies pile up, and as the certainty that when the dust settles, Neal won't be back at school. Winslow's Aryan crazies don't have the threatening solidity of Stephen Greenleaf's (Southern Cross, p. 1102 ), but Neal's latest adventure is full of entertaining derring-do.
Pub Date: Nov. 16, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-09934-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1993
O'Brien proves to be the Oliver Stone of literature, reiterating the same Vietnam stories endlessly without adding any insight. Politician John Wade has just lost an election, and he and his wife, Kathy, have retired to a lakeside cabin to plan their future when she suddenly disappears. O'Brien manages to stretch out this simple premise by sticking in chapters consisting of quotes from various sources (both actual and fictional) that relate to John and Kathy. An unnamed author — an irritating device that recalls the better-handled but still imperfect "Tim O'Brien" narrator of The Things They Carried (1990) — also includes lengthy footnotes about his own experiences in Vietnam. While the sections covering John in the third person are dry, these first-person footnotes are unbearable. O'Brien uses a coy tone (it's as though he's constantly whispering "Ooooh, spooky!"), but there is no suspense: The reader is acquainted with Kathy for only a few pages before her disappearance, so it's impossible to work up any interest in her fate. The same could be said of John, even though he is the focus of the book. Flashbacks and quotes reveal that John was present at the infamous Thuan Yen massacre (for those too thick-headed to understand the connection to My Lai, O'Brien includes numerous real-life references). The symbolism here is beyond cloying. As a child John liked to perform magic tricks, and he was subsequently nicknamed "Sorcerer" by his fellow soldiers — he could make things disappear, get it? John has been troubled for some time. He used to spy on Kathy when they were in college, and his father's habit of calling the chubby boy "Jiggling John" apparently wounded him. All of this is awkwardly uncovered through a pretentious structure that cannot disguise the fact that there is no story here. Sinks like a stone.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 061870986X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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