BOOKS


Author Interview Elly Griffiths


Elly Griffiths’ seventh Brighton Mysteries title travels back to the 1960s for a magical mystery


Alice O’Keeffe @aliceokbooks 18 21st July 2023


O


ver Zoom from her home in Brighton, Elly Griffiths shows me a formal black-and-white photograph of a dashingly handsome young man. It is her grand- father, Dennis Lawes, who fought in the First World War and aſterwards became a popular music hall comedian. It is he who provided the inspiration for Griffiths’ bestselling Brighton Mysteries series, which began with The Zig Zag Girl, set in 1950, and introduced Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens and his old friend, magician Max Mephisto. The pair served together in the war as part of a shadowy unit called the Magic Men.


When her grandfather died, Griffiths inherited his collection of playbills (posters announcing a theatrical appearance), including one from the early 1950s which listed the fabulously named “Raydini: The Gay Deceiver”. “Now, I don’t know who he was or who he was deceiving but I imagined that he was a magician and really that was the name that sparked this book,” says Griffiths. “I


Photography: Sara Reeve


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