Book Review - Elly Griffiths's The Zig Zag Girl
The Zig Zag Girl by Elly Griffiths
Published by: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Date: November 6th, 2014
Format: Kindle, 338 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)
A woman's body has been found in the Brighton train depot. Cut and placed in three boxes, one of which was sent directly to the police station. The task of catching the killer falls to Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens. His first thought is that the presentation of the body is rather theatrical. In fact it reminds him of a magic trick created by the great Max Mephisto called "The Zig Zag Girl" that he saw with his brother before the war. Edgar's hunch is confirmed when the identity of the victim turns out to be Max's old assistant, Ethel. Edgar got to know Max during the war. They served together in a unit called the Magic Men. The unit was basically a ghost unit running magicians up in Scotland to confound the Nazis, with Edgar being a civilian recruited to the MI5 unit due to his crossword savvy. None of them look back too fondly on the time, aside from losing the love of his life, Edgar had an easy war, unlike his brother who didn't survive it, something he is sure his mother is still holding against him. Edgar therefore felt it imperative that his life mean something, and instead of going back to college he joined the police. Max on the other hand liked having an audience, which is why as soon as the war was over he went back to the stage, as did their comrades Stan "The Great Diablo" Parks and Tony Mulholland. No one has heard from Diablo in years, but it can't be a coincidence that Max arrives in Brighton and is on the same bill as Tony Mulholland right when Edgar is looking into the murder being linked to the Magic Men. There is no doubt they are being targeted when Tony, who had his sights on taking his "magic" and "mesmerism" to the next level with American television, ends up dead right when he had something important to tell Edgar. This is personal. What's more, the killer isn't just targeting them now, they are being baited. "The Wolf Trap" will be their next trick, but who will be the victim?
There are few people whose book recommendations I always heed. One of those people is Lauren Willig. When she said that Elly Griffiths's series known as "The Brighton Mysteries" or "The Magic Men Mysteries," depending on where you are in the series, as Endeavour set in Brighton, I knew I had to instantly read them. Because in all seriousness, who doesn't need an Inspector Morse fix every once in awhile? And I instantly got the Morse vibe with Edgar Stephens and his crosswords, but with the Max Mephisto side of this I was getting a distinct Lost Empires vibe. Lost Empires is a horridly depressing adaptation of the book by the same name by L.B. Priestley about a young man played by Colin Firth and his experiences in music halls on the eve of the first World War. Other than being a completest, there was no reason I watched this miniseries to it's grueling end until now. Because that little extra insight of what it's like to travel from town to town and theater to theater made me understand Max's life and made Lost Empires worth it. And I seriously thought watching Lost Empires would never pay off in any tangible way other than giving me nightmares about Laurence Olivier dressed up as a munchkin offing himself. As for the book itself? There's no getting around the fact that it was obviously written as the first in a series. So while this book could work on it's own, it really works better knowing that this is setting everything up for the continued success of the series. This means that the plot was rather predictable. When a group of formally close colleagues that have a secret and a past start getting targeted, well, it's kind of obvious who's behind it all. So for me the plot just plodded along until the final reveal I had seen coming from the beginning. That isn't to say this book didn't work, it did, but as a character study. This was all about meeting the characters and understanding them for the adventures that are to come. And, oh, they are wonderful adventures. But the first outing... it suffers because of what it is and what it's meant to be. There is no mystery to solve there.
When I first "discovered" Colin Firth, AKA when I watched Pride and Prejudice in the summer of 1996, I embarked on a voyage of discovery among his back catalog of work. I rented EVERYTHING the local video store had. Another County not to be confused with the far superior A Month in the Country! The ill-timed and ill-conceived Valmont. Apartment Zero with it's deliciously devious denouement. I even trolled late night television and stumbled on Camille. But one day I saw a DVD release for a show called Lost Empires. Seven episodes full of Colin Firth! That's one more than Pride and Prejudice! I remember when it arrived I invited my mom to watch it with me. We made it only as far as the first episode. Because as she said; "If I have to watch Laurence Olivier for one more minute doing stupid jokes and dressed up as an Edwardian child with makeup I'll scream." Or something to that effect. I did try to point out that as he died at the end of the episode we wouldn't have to see him anymore. She didn't buy it. And in fairness, I wasn't that interested in completing it. Watching a baby Colin can only carry your interest for so long. But I've been viewing this Masterpiece Theatre retrospective as a chance to get around to the shows, some of them classics, that I hadn't gotten to yet. Therefore seeing as I already had the DVD set, Lost Empires was top billing! Oddly enough my first impressions aren't too far off my final impressions, but over the years I've watched a lot more shows of similar themes so I feel more justified in my opinion. I have watched a lot of miniseries set in music halls, from Tipping the Velvet to that one dreadful episode of Thomas and Sarah, and this has to be the least annoying due to the lack of songs getting stuck in your head combined with not being overly problematic with regards to black face and really horrific racial stereotypes. Yes, there's still an entitled white man playing an Indian mystic and a really weird hatred of midgets, but for what music halls were known for it's pretty tame, especially when you watch other shows. Which means instead of dwelling on how problematic it is in that regard, you can pick apart all the other problems. The bleak, fatalistic attitudes, the creepy sex parties, oh, and the shoehorned in happily ever after that really makes no sense. So if you want to see some really young Colin Firth doing an occasionally passable Yorkshire accent in a miniseries that is trying to state something bigger than they are capable of, IE the end of the music halls and the end of the age of the British Empire, than this downer of a miniseries is for you!
