The Mannequins by C. Toms-Arbel
Releases 31st October 2025
The Mannequins is a crime thriller which follows Detective Sergeant Cora Steele, who has one of the biggest cases of her career. When bodies are left posed like mannequins, DS Steele knows she has a serial killer on her hands. Will she survive this case? She needs to find answers before someone else gets killed. This book is a thrilling mystery which is filled with action and horror.
If you enjoy books by Karin Slaughter, Jeffery Deaver and Stuart MacBride, you will love this book.
He’s trying to tell us something, I’m certain of that, but at present all we have is the sign without the meaning, the symbol without the means to decode it. We know the word, but he’s speaking a language we haven’t learned. My fear is that he’s going to start teaching us.
This book is set in Church Stretton, England, which has a low crime rate. They get a murder maybe once a decade; now they have multiple in a short space of time. DS Steele hasn’t been a detective very long, but she has a master’s in criminology and has also shown her worth and was promoted to detective very quickly. That doesn’t stop people from doubting her ability. Cora will prove them wrong, no matter the cost.
But the sun has been smothered, and all that remained was darkness
I really enjoyed this book; it’s been a while since I read a detective book. I’ve been reading mainly romance for a few years now, but as a teenager and up until I was around 29/30, all I read was thrillers, crime and mysteries. My favourites are Karin Slaughter and Stuart MacBride. It was really good to sit and read a good crime thriller again. I liked DS Steele; she seemed authentic.
Whether you are a good person or a bad person is irrelevant. Hatred contaminates even the best people
I also liked the fact that there were a few chapters set in the past, we knew from the beginning who the suspect was, and we got a few chapters of him when he was younger, which helped to show how he became the sicko he was. There was an element of psychology in this book; it not only showed us how police investigate crimes, but also a bit of a look into the killer’s mind. It wasn’t heavy, but it was there; you don’t need a psychology degree to understand it. Psychology interests me, specifically why killers kill. I am a uni dropout, but I was studying Psychology and Criminology. I dropped out because of health reasons.
In the scenes that take us back to the suspect’s past, you do feel sorry for him. He had a bad upbringing, as most criminals do, to be honest. His mother was a piece of work, that’s for sure. This doesn’t excuse his behaviour, but it helps you understand it. After all, his mother battered his psyche.
There is one spicy scene in this book, which, as a romance reader, I enjoyed. I gave it 1 chilli pepper in my ratings for this, but romance is not the main theme of this book.
I’m super excited to see what Cora’s next case is. This is definitely an author that I will be following.
Thank you, C. Toms-Arbel for the ARC of this book.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5
🌶️/5
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