One of my favourite things about the modular buildings are the details. Many small details add up to make not only the finished product so fun to look at and play with, but to also make the building experience enjoyable. I love the little “aha!” moments that sometimes come when building a set with a fine attention to detail, as I discover features not readily apparent. The Detective’s Office has so many of those moments, and some fun building techniques. This set is a replica of the major brand set 10246.

The finished building looks great with the optional light kits available online. Let’s dive into the build! Luckily, this set is among the newer ones with numbered stages and bags. It makes sorting parts much more convenient when dealing with nearly 2,300 pieces.

Here we begin the tiled floor and the pavement. My little girl has brought her extra-big Duplo blocks to the party, along with some play food. She’s anticipating a long build, and with over 2200 pieces, she’s right!

We first build the pool hall. It’s complete with a billiards table, a rack for the cue sticks, and a trophy. The use of snowshoe elements to build a ceiling fan is brilliant. The ceiling fan cleverly moves aside for access to play in the pool hall.

The effect of the transparent bricks above the door is one of stained glass. It looks great.

The quality and clarity of the window and door transparent plastic are pretty good. The printing on the windows is perfect. This is clearly a high-class establishment.

Here, the pool hall is situated next to my Lego-brand Parisian Cafe set. As you can see, the brick quality is indistinguishable. The cloned paving tiles are as smooth and clear as the Lego tiles. The colours match perfectly. And the base plates connect perfectly to each other using the modular building pin system.

Once we’ve finished the pool hall, we move on to Al’s barbershop. The building on the right is built of two different colours of blue. Reviews of the major-branded set mentioned that the light blue bricks in that set were of three different shades! The clone’s quality control might actually be better. Here, all our light blue bricks were the same beautiful shade of blue. The cloner has really got their manufacturing processes up to superb quality. The combination of the light and dark blue is also an attractive scheme for a building set next to one of the brown bricks.

The barbershop features a brick-built chair that reminded me so much of the kind I’d sit in as a young lad going for a haircut. The shop features a mirror, as well, which is mounted on the wall with an adhesive. The mirror is smooth, reflective, and really adds a professional touch. This same mirror also shows up in the 15018 Assembly Square dance studio. It’s a great element to add a realistic flair.

For added fun, and play value, this set has a “mystery” to solve. It couldn’t feature a detective’s office without also giving him a job to do, right? Between the pool hall and the barber shop is a secret underground tunnel (it can be accessed from under the trophy in the pool hall, under the porch in the middle, or from the barber shop under the stairs. The mystery revolves around a cookie-smuggling operation in an era of cookie prohibition. There’s also a secret exit from the barbershop to the back alley, through the barber’s storage cabinet.

Here’s Al the barber. He’s branching out into feline hairstyling. The scissors accessory is a cute touch. You get two with this set: one for Al, and one for his shop’s sign, which we’ll see below.

The barber’s shop is tiny. But they have managed to fit in a sink along with the mannequin heads to display sample hair styles. The staircase on the left is on a hinge which allows it to be moved up and out of the way for play.

My daughter’s Girls Club minidoll has just dropped by on her scooter to deliver some cupcakes to the pool hall. Here, you can see the small arcade with a porch which conceals a secret tunnel between the two ground-floor establishments. Al’s sign is made from small blue and white 1×1 plates and a few other tricks that can serve as an inspiration for making your own signs. The scissors are a nice touch, as is the barber pole. It would be nice if it could turn, but it does not.

Here’s an overview of the interior of the ground floor. Once you move the ceiling fan and the stairs aside, one can easily create play scenarios. That’s one of the things I love about the newer modular buildings: with fully furnished interiors, they are realistic not only for display, but also it makes playing in them more fun.

Our next floor is where the detective works and uses the toilet. The floor includes a small hallway between the stairs and the Detective’s Office, with a potted plant for added realism. The toilet stall is a clever bit of design, fitting the essentials into a small footprint.

Ace Brickman’s office looks exactly like it came out of some Clone Noir mystery novel. Grungy brown chairs, filing cabinets full of letters, a cluttered desk with maps, a newspaper, a desk lamp, and more letters, including an apparent love letter. He’s also got a safe and a fan. One of the nicest touches is the in-wall secret safe, concealed behind the sailing ship art. And the Wanted poster should inspire him to be on the lookout for the 42-mm tall, black-eyed, yellow man of mystery wanted for questioning

The magnifying glass is real! I had to snap the lens into the frame, and it does in fact work.

The hat rack keeps Ace’s fedora (well, more like a cowboy hat, really) at the ready for when he must leave the office in a hurry to search for new clues.

The contraband kitchen, where the illegal cookies are baked. Does our detective know this is happening just one floor up from his office?

The printed window sign for Ace Brickman and the POOL sign, built of bricks and tiles, really make this look like a building right out of downtown any big American city from the 1930’s. The combination of brown brick and the blues of the barber shop looks nice together. I really like the cement-looking window sills on the upper floors. This sort of technique adds a lot of realism.

Here’s Ace venturing out for a night of crime solving.

The newspaper box contains room for three copies of the Cloneland newspaper. Our billiards champion is interested in reading all about “The Greatest [Clone] hero ever!”

Some fun architectural features show up on the rooflines of each of the two buildings. One the left, pieces modelled after LEGO Bionicle hands are placed in a row. On the right building, we have four pieces modelled after Lego Unikitty’s tail adding some detail.

One of the most creative parts has to be the water tower on the roof. Built from tractor treads and tiles, this comes off looking very realistic.

With a detective, a client, a pool player, a barber, and a policewoman, this set has lots of potential to create fun scenes to portray and play out.

This set was a lot of fun to build. The main difference between the replica and the major brand version is the cat. The clone set came with a larger cat, more akin to a tiger cub perhaps. Every brick was solid. Every tile and plate was straight. Clutch power between every aspect of it was solid. With all the fun architectural details, this set makes a great addition to your brick city display, and its fun to play with, as well. I highly recommend adding the Detective’s Office to your collection. The cloner has another hit with this replica set.

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