Zigzag Girl

Paperback

2026 International Thriller Writers Awards finalist for Best Standalone Novel

To catch a killer who knows her secrets, magician Lucy Moon must perform the most dangerous trick of her life—discovering who she really is.

ZIGZAG GIRL is a noir-tinged feminist thriller where The Prestige meets Knives Out in Atlantic City's haunted magic underworld. When magician Lucy Moon finds her best friend murdered inside the infamous sawing box that killed a performer decades ago—a black rose in her mouth, the same signature from Lucy's buried past—she's thrust into a deadly game of deception. To unmask a killer who knows her secrets, Lucy must navigate shadowy criminal networks, confront an unsolved 1940s murder, and perform the most dangerous trick of her life: discovering who she really is.

Zigzag Girl joins our Black Spring Crime Series, endorsed by UK crime fiction giants, Ian Rankin and Lee Child.

Born in Morocco, Ruth Knafo Setton is the author of The Road to Fez and Zigzag Girl, which is a finalist for the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Standalone Book of 2026. Zigzag Girl also won Grand Prize in the ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Competition and First Place in the Daphne du Maurier Awards. Her TV pilot for Zigzag Girl won First Prize at the LA Crime and Horror Film Festival; her screenplays have been recognized by Austin Film Festival, Sundance, and CineStory. An NEA Fellow, she taught creative writing at Lehigh University and with Semester at Sea.

More information can be found on her website: www.ruthsetton.com/

A mystery that understands how easily a performance can become a crime—and how dangerous it is to confuse the two. - Kirkus Reviews