R. N. Morris
English writer and advertising copywriter
Roger N Morris (born 1960 in Manchester) is an English historical fiction author and advertising copywriter. He is known for the historical fiction novels based upon the Dostoevsky character Porfiry Petrovich, and for the Inspector Silas Quinn historical detective series.
Work
Morris' first novel, Taking Comfort, was published by Macmillan New Writing and appeared in April 2006. His second novel The Gentle Axe, based on the character Porfiry Petrovich from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, was published by the Penguin Press in 2007. The review website Kirkus characterised the novel as "Russian Lit Lite" while The New York Times was more positive, stating the novel "in many ways feels less like a modern tribute to Dostoyevsky than a translation of an overlooked novel by one of his contemporary imitators, transported into the present". The 2008 sequel, A Vengeful Longing, continued the premise and similarly featured the character of Porfiry Petrovich, investigating murders in St. Petersburg.
In 2010 Morris collaborated with the composer Ed Hughes on a new opera entitled Cocteau in the Underworld, which received work-in-progress performances through the OperaGenesis scheme, a ROH2 initiative with the support of the Genesis Foundation.
With the novel Summon Up the Blood, released in 2012, Morris started the Inspector Silas Quinn series of novels set in 1910s London. The sixth and latest Quinn release was in 2020, with the mystery The Music Box Enigma.
The public source identifies “R. N. Morris” as english writer and advertising copywriter. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Morris, English and writer.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1000884. VIAF identifies the subject as 101010948. The Library of Congress control number is nr2006017265. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960, 2006, 2007 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “R. N. Morris” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.