Smoke And Mirrors (Brighton Mysteries, 2)

From School Library Journal Tweens Annie and Mark are missing, and DI Edgar Stephens is charged with leading the search in Brighton, England, in the winter of 1951. It is just before Christmas, and that means pantomime play season in England. The "panto" plays are intertwined with the grim fairy tales that young Annie writes and stages in a lonely neighbor's garage. The girl has been mentored by her primary school teacher, and she enlists the help of her many brothers and sisters and her best friend Mark, who shares a working-class upbringing. It's lucky for DI Stephens that it is play season, because that means his close friend from the war, magician Max Mephisto, is in town performing. Though very different, Max and Edgar forged a tight friendship during World War II, when they were assigned as "Magic Men" in a covert operation. There are so many trails to follow and so many possible suspects, and as time runs out for the missing children, another victim emerges. While the British colloquialisms about the "panto" will be new to American readers, the focus on child victims; the dark, fairy-tale aspects; and the engaging characters will draw students into this second in the series. Hand this one to fans of Mary Higgins Clark. VERDICT An excellent addition to larger mystery collections.—Jake Pettit, Enka Schools, Istanbul, Turkey "An entertaining read and could be followed up with some of the author’s other novels."-- Historical Novel Society "Griffiths’ success with this series bodes well for future books...will continue to look for the name of Elly Griffiths, no matter which series she is writing."-- Bookgasm "A magician's misdirections may provide the clue that solves three murders in 1950s Brighton. DI Edgar Stephens and his team are desperately seeking two children who have gone missing. Twelve-year-old Mark Webster and his 13-year-old friend Annie Francis came home from school, went out to play, and vanished. When their snow-covered bodies are found, Stephens is desperate to find the killer. Along with sergeants Bob Willis and Emma Holmes, he canvasses the area, questioning everyone, including the owner of the sweets shop near the disappearance and the man the children call Uncle Brian, who has a theater set up in his garage. The investigation leaves Stephens scant time for his old friend Max Mephisto, a famous magician reduced to playing in a pantomime show on Brighton Pier, who wants to help. Not only did they serve together in World War II in a special group recruited by MI5 to fool the Germans, but Max helped Stephens solve a tough case (The Zig Zag Girl, 2015) when he first arrived to serve with the Brighton force. Annie, despite her lower-class background, was extremely bright and wrote plays that cast her friends and relatives. Stunning teacher Daphne Young encouraged her pupil's talent in adapting gruesome versions of fairy tales. But before she can reveal something she realizes may help the police, she's found strangled. Although the team follows every clue, including a possible tie to a 1912 theatrical murder, the solution remains tantalizingly out of reach. A dazzlingly tricky mystery, oddball characters, and an authentic feel for life in post-World War II England." --Kirkus "Set in Brighton, England, in 1951, Griffith’s captivating sequel to 2015’s Zig Zag Girl finds Det. Insp. Edgar Stephens embroiled in a grim holiday hunt for the murderer of two children. Like an unnerving scene from a fairy tale, a trail of candy in the snow leads to the bodies of Annie Francis, a 13-year-old with a talent for writing, and Mark Webster, her constant companion of similar age. As Stephens searches for a killer, tension grows in the town. Is the murderer the candy-store owner and the last to see them alive, or the quirky bachelor who helped the victims stage plays? Matters become more complicated when magician Max Mephisto, Stephen’s friend, appears with a disturbingly similar tale of an earlier murder. Is an actor in the Christmas pantomime connected to the long-ago murder of a young performer? Are the present-day murders a reenactment? Stephens and his team must sort through misdirection and vanishing acts before another child dies in this suspenseful outing."-- Publishers Weekly "WWII special-ops veterans DCI Edgar Stephens and magician Max Mephisto, the “Magic Men” of The Zig Zag Girl (2015), are back. Two children have been murdered, their bodies left in a bizarre Hansel-and-Gretel tableau. When the teacher of one of the victims is also found dead, the Grimm link becomes even stronger. The investigation plays out in a bitterly cold and snowy winter in 1951 Brighton, shortly before Christmas. The sense of time and place is very strong. The postwar rationing of heating fuel is chilling. Wear warm socks for this one. Griffiths’ ability to assemble a cast of eccentric characters from the townsfolk and the shadowy theater world makes for a credible suspect list, although how the author manages (along with her engaging Ruth Galloway books) to maintain two superlative series is the real mystery here. An excellent — Praise for the Magic Men Mysteries xa0 “Absorbing .º.º. Another great series.” — San Jose Mercury News “Thoroughly enjoyable.” — Guardian “Clever, immensely likeable.” — Wall Street Journal “Enormously engaging.” — Daily Mail “Original, lively, and gripping.” — Independent “A wild ride full of mayhem, magic and murder.” — Absolute “Excellent .º.º. Evoking both the St. Mary Mead of Agatha Christie and the theater world of Ngaio Marsh.” — Booklist “Suspenseful.” — Publishers Weekly ELLY GRIFFITHS is the author of the Ruth Galloway and Brighton mystery series, as well as the standalone novels The Stranger Diaries, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel, and The Postscript Murders . She is the recipient of the CWA Dagger in the Library Award and the Mary Higgins Clark Award.xa0She lives in Brighton, England. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. PROLOGUE: HASTINGS, 1912 Stan entered stage left. Of course he did; he was the villain. Villains always enter from the left, the Good Fairy from the right. It's the first law of pantomime. But, in this case, Stan Parks (the Wicked Baron) came running onto the stage in answer to a scream from Alice Dean (Robin Hood). He came quickly because Alice was not normally given to screaming. Even when Stan had tried to kiss her behind the flat depicting Sherwood Forest she hadn't screamed; instead she had simply delivered an efficient uppercut that had left him winded for hours. So he responded to the sound, in his haste falling over two giant toadstools and a stuffed fox. The stage was in semi-darkness, some of the scenery still covered in dustsheets. At first Stan could only make out shapes, bulky and somehow ominous, and then he saw Alice, kneeling centre stage, wearing a dressing gown over her green Principal Boy tights. She was still screaming, a sound that seemed to get louder and louder until it reached right up to the gods and the empty boxes. Opposite her something swung to and fro, casting a monstrous shadow on the painted forest. Stan stopped, suddenly afraid to go any further. Alice stopped screaming and Stan heard her say something that sounded like 'please' and 'no'. He stepped forward. The swinging object was a bower, a kind of basket chair, where the Babes in the Wood were meant to shelter before being covered with leaves by mechanical robins (a striking theatrical effect). The bower should have been empty because the Babes didn't rehearse in the afternoon. But, as Stan got closer, he saw that it was full of something heavy, something that tilted it over to one side. Stan touched the basket, suddenly afraid of its awful, sagging weight. And he saw Betsy Bunning, the fifteen-year-old girl who was playing the female Babe. She lay half in, half out of the swinging chair. Her throat had been cut and the blood had soaked through her white dress and was dripping heavily onto the boards. It was odd. Later, Stan would go through two world wars, see sights guaranteed to turn any man's blood to ice, but nothing ever disturbed him quite so much as the child in the wicker bower, the blood on the stage and the screams of the Principal Boy. ONE: BRIGHTON, 1951 It was snowing when Edgar Stephens woke up. The view from his window, the tottering Regency terraces leading down to the sea, was frosted and magical. But the sight gave him no pleasure at all. He hated snow. He still had nightmares about the Norway campaign, the endless march over the ice, his companions falling into the drifts to freeze where they lay, the moments when the bright white landscape seemed to rearrange itself into fantastical shapes andxa0colours, the soft voices speaking from the frozen lakes:xa0'Lie down and I'll give you rest for ever.' They hadn't had the proper gear then either, reflected Edgar, pulling onxa0a second pair of socks. The Norwegian troops had skis and fur jackets; the British had shivered in greatcoats andxa0leaking boots. Well, he still didn't have a pair of snow boots. It wasn't something that you needed as a policeman in Brighton, generally speaking. But today was different. Today was the second day of searching for two lost children. A search made a hundred times grimmer and more desperate by the soft white flakes falling outside. Edgar squeezed his multi-socked feet into his thickest shoes. Then he put on a fisherman's jumper under his heaviest coat. As a final touch he added a Russian hat, given to him years ago by Diablo. He knew that he looked ridiculous (he must remember to take it off before he got to the station) but the hat made a surprising amount of difference. As he slipped and staggered down Albion Hill, holding on to parked cars and garden fences, his head at least remained warm. The Pavilion was a fairy-tale wonder of snowy domes and minarets. The Steine Gardens were smooth with snow but as Edgar tried to cross the road he slipped twice on hard-packed ice. As he limped down the alleyway by the YMCA building (once the home of Maria Fitzherbert, the secret wife of the Prince Regent, and said to be linked to the Pavilion by a secret tunnel), he wondered if they would be able to get any cars out at all. He'd have to get on to the army barracks in Dyke Road. Perhaps they would be able to lend him a jeep or two. They really needed to search on the downs and in the parks but the snow might make that impossible. The children had now been missing for forty hours. When he reached Bartholomew Square, he was exhausted and his feet were soaking. In the lobby he met his sergeant, Bob Willis, apparently disguised as a deep-sea fisherman in waders and oilskins. 'Nice hat, sir." Damn, he'd forgotten to take off the Russian hat. Edgar snatched it from his head, its wet fur feeling unpleasantly like a living animal. 'Is anyone else in?' he asked. 'One or two," said Bob, sitting down and starting to pull off his waders. 'the super's snowed in in Rottingdean." 'Let's hope he's the only one. We need every man we can get." 'Charming.' Turning round, Edgar saw Sergeant Emma Holmes, the latest recruit to CID and recipient of a lot of teasing about her name, her sex and just about everything else, really. Not that this seemed to bother her. She was unfailingly calm and professional. This, combined with her white-blonde hair and blue eyes, gave her an almost Nordic aspect although, as far as Edgar knew, she had been born and brought up in Brighton. 'man as in person," said Edgar, wondering if he was making things worse. 'Why not just say person then?' said Emma mildly, taking off her duffle coat. Edgar was about to answer when Bob's waders came off with a hideous squelching sound. 'Let's get ready for the morning meeting," he said. At least he knew not to ask Emma to put the kettle on. Edgar addressed the team promptly at nine. A few people had been delayed by the weather but most had struggled in, some of them walking long distances through the snow. Edgar knew that this was indicative of the strength of feeling about this case. As he summarised the investigation so far, he was aware that every eye was on him. These people cared, not just because they were police officers and it was their job to care. They cared because there were children involved and even the most unimaginative plod could put themselves in the position of parents waiting for news, watching the snow outside and knowing that it was covering up precious clues. Knowing, too, that their children were outside in the cold, alive or dead. Mark Webster and Annie Francis had gone missing some time on Monday afternoon. Mark was twelve and Annie thirteen. They had come home from school and had spent some time playing with other local children in Freshfield Road, a long residential street that led all the way up to the racecourse. It was thought that Annie and Mark had then gone to the corner shop to buy sweets. Thexa0parents weren't worried at first; the children were old enough to look after themselves after all. It wasn't until night had fallen (early in these dark days of November) that Sandra Francis knocked on Edna Webster's door and suggested searching for the truants. "I wanted to givexa0Annie a good hiding for worrying us so much," Mrs Francis admitted to Edgar. "It wasn't until later that Ixa0.?.?.' Here she had broken down in tears, mopping them on the apron that was still tied around her waist. Read more