Brighton, 1964. Rhonda Miles has disappeared from her boarding school. It is presumed that she has run away to London to meet Bobby Hambro, the young film star that she, and countless other young women, are currently idolising, but her father, Sir Crispian White, demands that the local police, led by DCI Edgar Stephens, find her as a matter of urgency.

Edgar, meanwhile, has met up with Max Mephisto, former magician and current US film star, who has returned to Brighton for the funeral of their old colleague, but the case takes his full attention when Emma, his wife and former colleague, discovers links between two other missing girls. And then the case gets personal for everyone as someone else disappears – Max’s daughter, Ruby…

It’s been a long time since I’ve been back to this series – over six years in fact. This is the fifth of what was called the “Stephens and Mephisto Mysteries”, but with this book seem to be rebranded as the “Brighton Mysteries.” There’s a good reason for the rebrand, as the book takes a fair chunk of its page count dealing with Emma’s attempts at investigating the crimes, while dealing with motherhood and her annoyance at no longer being a police officer. Although she is Emma Stephens, so the branding does still work…

The reason I decided to get back to this series – I’ve been meaning to for a while – was that the other week my local independent bookshop, Warwick Books, hosted a talk and book signing by Domenica de Rosa aka Elly Griffiths. I’d recommend any such event, by the way, as Domenica/Elly is a fantastic speaker – it was a hugely entertaining evening. Anyway, as this is her series that I’ve read the most of, I thought I’d go back to it.

One thing that came across in the talk is how important character is, especially the lead characters, in Elly’s stories. It was clear that a large number of people at the talk were fans of the Ruth Galloway series, judging by the number of contented sighs whenever her name (or the name of the love interest) was mentioned. Readers become invested in the characters that she creates, and it’s easy to see why.

There’s been a jump of about ten years between this and the last book, and a number of the cast are in different situations that when last we saw them. As I said, the primary focus is on Emma here, and her young “replacement”, Meg. I did enjoy their mutual enmity – Emma sees Meg as her replacement whereas Meg sees Emma’s shoes as being impossible to fill – and the eventual resolution, along with the other character work too. I can see how readers can get invested, it really is a strong point of the author’s writing.

The mystery side is… well, perfectly fine, but if that’s the only thing you’re looking for in a mystery novel, then you may find it a little straightforward, with the motivation for the killer being fairly basic. Given the depth given to the leads, it might be surprising that the killer’s motivation is given fairly short shrift but based on things said in the talk, I think this is a deliberate choice by the author not to dwell on the nastiness.

The one thing that did disappoint me was the lack of magic – with two magicians in the central cast (although one of them is missing for most of the book), and indeed the title, you might be expecting something close to Rawson’s Merlini or Tom Mead’s Joseph Spector, but this isn’t that sort of book. It’s an engrossing read, and with the time jump, it’s a good place for readers to start too.