Vanity Rooms, The

The third book in the 'Honeyman' series, Honeyman being a sort of spiritual detective on the trail of a Satanic organisation covertly operating under various guises. In the first and second novels they appeared as bereavement counsellors and a fertility clinic respectively, and in this latest incarnation they are a kind of arts council, giving free accommodation to aspiring celebrities. The accommodation is in fact 13 rooms that were once occupied by a group of eighteenth-century French emigres, all of whom sought celebrity in their own particular field. The room occupied by the central character was once hosted by a chess master. The central character in the modern day inherits a mobile phone which through its apps carries the room with him: in the room itself, a replica of 'the Turk', an eighteenth-century automaton, has started a strange chess game, where the pieces come to resemble people in his life, making his dreams of celebrity come true.