THE GIRL
IN THE
CRIMSON COAT
CASE FILE 03
A girl in red. A trail of blood. A truth no one wants found.
A woman calling herself Angel walks into Frank Mercer’s office and hires him to find her missing sister.
The trail leads to the Ember Room, a jazz club dressed in red velvet, smoke, mob whispers, and dangerous promises.
But the deeper Frank digs, the more he realizes this case was never just about a missing girl.
It was about power.
And the woman in the crimson coat may already know how the story ends.
THE CASE FILE
Frank Mercer is hired by a woman who calls herself Angel.
She is elegant, wealthy, dangerous, and wrapped in the kind of perfume that lingers long after the truth walks out the door.
Her sister, Marcy, is missing.
At least, that is the story.
The trail leads Frank to the Ember Room, a high-end jazz club where mob men, city officials, and social climbers trade secrets under red velvet lights.
Marcy came to the city to meet Tommy Ricci. She never made it home.
When Frank finds her name in a police file and her body in the river, the case turns colder. Strangled. Dumped. Wrapped in a crimson coat.
The same coat Angel wore when she walked into his office.
Now Frank has to decide whether he is chasing a killer, protecting one, or falling for the most dangerous woman in the city.
WHY START HERE
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INTRODUCES ANGEL DEVINE
Meet the woman who changes Frank Mercer’s world forever, elegant, ruthless, and impossible to walk away from.
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A KEY PREQUEL CASE FILE
This case stands on its own, but it also sets the stage for The Man Who Died Twice and introduces the Ember Room, one of the most important locations in the Mercer archive.
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EXPANDS THE ARCHIVE
This case expands Mercer’s city, the Ember Room, the mob, Bannon, and the dangerous women who rule from the shadows.
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FROM THE AUTHOR
Phillip Deam on the idea behind this case.
The Girl in the Crimson Coat is a story about power.
Not just the kind of power that comes from money, violence, or influence, but the kind that lets people believe they can stand above consequence. I wanted this case to explore what people are willing to do in order to gain power, keep it, or protect it once they have it.
But just as important was the other side of that idea: what the rest of us are willing to let slide.
Because power rarely survives on its own. It survives because people look away. Because they make excuses. Because they tell themselves that someone else will step in, or that the cost of speaking up is too high.
In this story, Frank is not just dealing with danger or deception. He is moving through a world where people have learned to live beside corruption, and in some cases, benefit from it. That was one of the key things I wanted to capture, the uneasy question of how much wrongdoing a society can tolerate before it begins to feel normal.
For me, The Girl in the Crimson Coat was about tension, manipulation, and moral pressure, but underneath all of that was a simpler question: when power starts pushing against truth, how long do people stay silent?
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The classic way to open the file. Read The full series one in paperback and begin collecting the Mercer archive in print.
SERIES ONE:
EIGHT CASE FILES
1 CITY
The Mercer Files
Real shadows. cases that don't let go.
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