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'Gwendoline Butler is excellent on the bizarre fantasies of other people's lives and on modern paranoia overlaying old secrets; and her plots have the rare ability to shock' Andrew Taylor, Independent The discovery of the mutilated body of Harry Seton shouldn't have concerned John Coffin, Commander of London's Second City. But the victim, a detective doing undercover work on the sale of illegal pharmaceuticals, had left a note amongst his papers: 'Ask Coffin'. What he meant by this no one show more seems to know, including his superior, but it appears that Seton had been secretly investigating internal corruption just before his brutal murder. Coffin, acting on private instructions from above, directly involves himself in following up on Seton's work only to find that someone is ahead of the game, muddying tracks and destroying evidence.But the Second City is bracing itself for a far greater tragedy. Four boys, each connected to the police in some way, have gone missing, and just as Coffin starts off in Seton's footsteps a child's body turns up - buried in a shallow grave in common land. That the children have been specifically targeted by someone with a grudge against the police seems obvious; that the perpetrator is deranged is now clear. The only witnesses to the abductions are a gang of roller-bladers, but fear and something else is keeping them quiet.The Second City is gripped by the horror of these events, and horror too comes stalking directly to Coffin's door, threatening both him and Stella. But is it Harry Seton's nemesis who is seeking out Coffin, or the child-killer still out there in the night? show lessTags
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80+ Works 1,830 Members
Gwendoline Butler, née Williams was born on August 19, 1922 in South London, England. She was a British writer of mystery fiction and romance novels since 1956. She also used the pseudonym Jennie Melville. Credited for inventing the "woman's police procedural", is well known for her series of Inspector John Coffin novels as Gwendoline Butler, and show more by female detective Charmian Daniels as Jennie Melville. She was educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she read History, and later lectured there. In 1956, she started to publish John Coffin novels under her married name, Gwendoline Butler. In 1962, she decided to use her grandmother's name, Jennie Melville as pseudonym to sign her Charmian Daniels novels. In addition to her mystery series, she also wrote romantic novels. In 1981, her novel The Red Staircase won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association. Her titles include Receipt for Murder, Coffin Following, Coffin's Ghost, Coffin Knows the Answer and Loving Murder. She died on January 5, 2013. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- A Grave Coffin
- Original title
- A Grave Coffin
- Original publication date
- 1998-10
- People/Characters
- John Coffin; Harry Seton
- Important places
- London, England, UK
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 62
- Popularity
- 500,952
- Rating
- (2.70)
- Languages
- English, German
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 8
- ASINs
- 2
