‘The Mannequin House’ by R.N. Morris is the second book in the Detective Silas Quinn mystery series. A new author to me so I haven’t read the first book but it reads very well as a Standalone. A historical crime fiction book which is among one of my favourite genres.
The book is set in 1914, London. We meet Silas Quinn head of the Special Crimes Department along with two sergeants. A young woman’s body is discovered in her room which is locked in a boarding house. She is a Mannequin or a model for The House of Brackley a department store and lives with other models who she works with. Silas finds himself with quite a bizarre case when he discovers the room was locked from the inside and the only other occupant was a monkey in a red fez!
He soon finds out that the department store is full of lies and secrets. The other girls are all not going out of their way to aid him. They are jealous, deceitful and very skilled in the art of lying. Will Silas be able to solve this mystery even with everything against him?
A book that had me hooked from the beginning. I was transported back to 1914 immediately with this intriguing take on the classic locked-room mystery with plenty of twists and turns in the story. As the story develops there comes a point where you think you have it sorted and, bam the author has sent you down a blind alley and you are back where you started. Silas Quinn is a detective that doesn’t suffer fools gladly. He is a man with a dark side. His previous case led to the death of his main suspect and he didn’t really care, never mind show any emotions. His superiors worry about his high death count, and with good reason too.
I always enjoy a mystery with a little humour and Silas’s interactions with Coddington definitely made me laugh. This makes the book a little lighter than it may have been without that. A well-paced story that brings a conclusion worthy of the mystery. I will be getting the first book in the series if only to find out what really happened in Silas Quinn’s previous case!
Thanks to Canelo and R.N Morris for my gifted copy of the book.
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