Worldwide Library Mysteries

3 primary works

A Double Coffin

by Gwendoline Butler

Published 19 September 1996

`Her [Gwendoline Butler's] inventiveness never seems to flag; and the singular atmosphere of her books, compounded of jauntiness and menace, remains undiminished' Patricia Craig, TLS

A visit to the riverside apartment of the long retired former prime minister, Richard Lavender, is to have startling consequences for John Coffin. For it transpires that the old man, nearing the end of his life, has a confession to make: he is the son of a serial killer. He tells Coffin how, as a boy, he helped to bury one of his father's victims. Feeling death is near, he wants to repair and reclaim the past - with Coffin's help.

Unsure whether Lavender is caught up in fantasy or telling the truth, Coffin agrees to investigate and appoints Chief Inspector Phoebe Astley to the task. But then a young woman is found murdered on a foggy November night, and all too soon the sins of the past and present come together in a terrifying denouement.

A Grave Coffin

by Gwendoline Butler

Published November 1998

'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 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?

Coffin's Ghost

by Gwendoline Butler

Published 27 November 1999

'[Gwendoline Butler's] inventiveness never seems to flag; and the singular atmosphere of her books, compounded of jauntiness and menace, remains undiminished' Patricia Craig, TLS Everyone has a few ghost in their lives, especially John Coffin, Chief Commander of the Second City of London's Police. He had thought all his were laid to rest though, and, newly recovered from a gunshot wound, is hoping for a calmer life with his actress wife Stella Pinero. But he is soon to learn how wrong he is when a parcel containing dismembered limbs is found outside a women's refuge. The Serena Seddon Shelter for battered wives is located in Barrow Street, not far from Coffin's own home in St Luke's Tower. The link to Coffin, though, is more sinister than mere proximity, for the initials J.C. are written on the package, and the shelter is housed in the building where he lived on his arrival in the Second City. The discovery opens a door, through which troop a succession of horrible and violent events: lies, deception and sudden death. Thus Coffin's ghost walks...