A BRAVE new world is dawning in Brighton as the Sixties
swing into action… but for the local police, a schoolgirl’s disappearance is
just the opener to a dark, disturbing mystery.
If you haven’t already been swept away to the shadowy
corners of one of the south coast’s busiest and most vibrant resorts, then now
would be an excellent time to discover the sheer mastery of this cerebral,
subtle and utterly beguiling series.
Now You See Them is the fifth gripping Brighton Mystery and
comes from the pen of Elly Griffiths, an accomplished and elegant contemporary
crime writer whose work includes the award-winning, Norfolk-based Dr Ruth
Galloway series featuring a forensic archaeologist.
Griffiths has the gift of blending cosy, clever,
character-driven murder mysteries with acute social observation, a superbly
evoked sense of time and place, and immaculate detective work and plotting which
harks back to the golden age of Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and
Josephine Tey. These charming stories centre on a group of Second World War
friends who served together as part of a shadowy unit called the Magic Men,
using their knowledge of stage magic techniques to aid the war effort.
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| MYSTERIES: Elly Griffiths |
In their new outing, it’s now 1963 and life has moved on
apace for one of the pals, Edgar Stephens, who has been promoted to police
superintendent in Brighton, is married to his former police sergeant Emma
Holmes and has three young children.
Edgar’s wartime partner in arms, magician Max Mephisto, is a
movie star in Hollywood after moving to the States eleven years ago. Max is
married to leading film actress Lydia Lamont but his daughter Ruby – to a
former snake charmer called Emerald – is the star of the most popular TV show
in Britain, Magic Ruby.
The funeral of old magician friend, Stan Parks, better known
as the Great Diablo, reunites Edgar and Max but much has changed for them both
over the last decade. Edgar is struggling with his fresh responsibilities and
the new swinging Brighton of rioting mods and rockers, while Emma is chafing
against the restrictions of life solely as a housewife and mother.
Edgar’s sidekick, DI Bob Willis, meanwhile, is tackling the
biggest case since his own promotion… 16-year-old schoolgirl Rhonda Miles,
daughter of MP Sir Crispian Miles, has gone missing from Brighton’s high-class
boarding school Roedean.
It looks like she has run away but Emma, who initiates her
own detective work with her friend, local newspaper reporter Sam Collins, discovers
there are disturbing similarities to the disappearances of a local student nurse
and a tearaway ‘modette,’ neither of whom have been seen or heard from since.
Griffiths’ sleight of hand is a work of magic in itself as
she conjures up the edgy atmosphere of Brighton in the early Sixties… a place
of exciting new beginnings but still overshadowed by the legacy of war, and
facing the tensions of a more oppositional brand of youth culture.
In trademark style, Griffiths’ plotting is intriguing,
multi-layered and full of rich detail, each character is honed to perfection,
the social backdrop is immaculately researched, and the frustrations of young
women constrained by outdated notions of a man’s world are perfectly portrayed. Add on a dash of dark humour, and a thrilling dénouement,
and fans old and new will already be queueing for the next instalment.
(Quercus, hardback, £14.99)
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