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Title details for Smoke and Mirrors by Elly Griffiths - Available

Smoke and Mirrors

#2 in series

by Elly Griffiths
Daniel Philpott
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
"Another great series." — San Jose Mercury News
"A dazzlingly tricky mystery." — Kirkus Reviews

"A tremendous skein of red herrings, sharp and thorough police work, [and] mysterious connections." — Bookgasm

It's Christmastime in Brighton, and the city is abuzz about magician Max Mephisto's star turn in Aladdin. But the holiday cheer is lost on DI Edgar Stephens. He's investigating the murder of two children, Annie and Mark, who were found in the woods alongside a trail of candy—a horrifying scene eerily reminiscent of "Hansel and Gretel."
Edgar has plenty of leads. Annie, a dark child, wrote gruesome plays based on the Grimms' fairy tales. Does the key to the case lie in her final script? Or does the macabre staging of the bodies point to the theater and the capricious cast of Aladdin? Edgar enlists Max's help in penetrating the shadowy world of the theater. But is this all just classic misdirection?

"Excellent . . . Evoking both the St. Mary Mead of Agatha Christie and the theater world of Ngaio Marsh." — Booklist

  • Creators

  • Series

    Brighton Mystery

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 12, 2024

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780063398566
      • File size: 236586 KB
      • Duration: 08:12:53

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 30, 2016
      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. Agent: Rebecca Carter, Janklow & Nesbit.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Daniel Philpott's vibrant character portrayals create palpable tension in this murder mystery set in Brighton, England. Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens's Christmas is off to a sinister start: Two children have gone missing. Philpott conveys the town's growing anxiety as time passes and they are not found. His diverse voices bring out the personalities of the town's characters, deftly capturing their observations and thoughts. Their evolving suspicion of one another will keep listeners guessing. Furthermore, Philpott's spirited renderings of the theater programs and the eerie rhyme penned by one of the child victims juxtapose the liveliness of the story with its menacing undertones. Philpott's alluring performance ratchets up the tension in this compelling procedural. M.F. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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