Publisher Description
“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
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“The lively beginning broadens out into an excellent whodunit, matched by the terrific down-at-heel atmosphere of postwar Brighton.”
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Sunday Times (London)
About Elly Griffiths
Elly Griffiths is the USA Today bestselling 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; The Postscript Murders; and Bleeding Heart Yard. She is the recipient of the CWA Dagger in the Library Award and the Mary Higgins Clark Award. She lives in Brighton, England.
About the Narrators
Daniel Philpott trained at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts and, after success in the prestigious Carleton Hobbs Award for Radio Drama, has been prolific in BBC Radio and the Spoken Word industry. His theater work includes numerous productions on the London fringe. As an audiobook narrator, he has read George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and numerous others.
Kate Reading has recorded hundreds of audiobooks across many genres, over a thirty year plus career. Audie Awards: The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter (mystery), Breasts (non-fiction), Bellwether (fiction), and Words of Radiance (fantasy). Among other awards, she has been recognized with: the ALA Booklist best of 2019 for Bowlaway (fiction), AudioFile Magazine Voice of the Century, Earphones Awards, Narrator of the Year, Best Voice in Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Publisher’s Weekly’s Listen-Up Award. She records at her home studio, Madison Productions, Inc., in Maryland.
James Langton, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and later as a musician at the Guildhall School in London. He has worked in radio, film, and television, also appearing in theater in England and on Broadway. He is also a professional musician who led the internationally renowned Pasadena Roof Orchestra from 1996 to 2002.