Gwendoline Butler

Page Updated: 18/03/02

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Gwendoline Butler - Page 1

Coffin Knows the Answer

25 Mar 02

A Cold Coffin

The King Cried Murder!

Coffin's Ghost

A Grave Coffin

Audio Titles

18/03/02

and

Books By Gwendoline Butler

About the Author (Photo by Kinsella Studio)

Bibliography

First British Edition Allison & Busby (2002)

Coffin Knows the Answer
With his wife, the acclaimed actress Stella Pinero, away on a movie shoot in Scotland Chief Commander John Coffin is at a bit of a loose end with just the cat and dog for company. But one morning as he checks through the mail to forward to his wife, he gets a rather unpleasant surprise - horrific pictures of badly abused children sent anonymously to Stella. Rather than worry his wife, he vows to track down the culprit and calls in a trusted colleague, DO Phoebe Astley, to assist him in his enquiries.
As they investigate Stella’s stalker, another serious problem faces the detectives of the Second City of London. Several young girls have been murdered in Spinnergate with distinct and brutal similarities between the cases. Is there a serial killer on the loose? What is the connection to Stella Pinero or is it all coincidence? As the investigations get closer to each other in focus, Coffin starts to feel that there are very personal motives at play as his wife’s tormentor racks up the tension. When excavations near St Luke’s unearth a chilling secret buried in the grounds of Stella’s theatre, John feels the net closing around those nearest to him and must act quickly or risk losing all that he holds dear.
A gripping exploration of hidden desires and terrors, Coffin Knows the Answer poses some disturbing questions about identity and relationships in the modern world.
Acclaim for Gwendoline Butler
`Butler distils her own brand of disquiet: omnipresent and irresistible.’ The Sunday Times
`Hauntingly atmospheric ... explores the dark geography of a fictional London with almost Dickensian intensity’ The Times
`Her inventiveness never seems to flag; and the singular atmosphere of her books, compounded of jauntiness and menace, remains undiminished’ Patricia Craig, Times Literary Supplement
`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 ability to shock’ Andrew Taylor, The Independent

First British Edition HarperCollins (2000)

A Cold Coffin
See Review by John Boyles
London's Second City has been the scene of many a terrifying crime, but the discovery of a pile of infant skulls unearthed near police headquarters is particularly horrifying. Although most of them are prehistoric, there is one that is certainly a lot more recent. But for John Coffin, Chief Commander, there is another, more pressing, matter: the inexplicable triple murder of a midwife and her two daughters. The obvious suspect is her son, Black Jack Jackson, a local villain, but both Coffin and DI Phoebe Astley are reluctant to accept his guilt.
A further murder seems, in a macabre fashion, to connect the two investigations. But when other apparently random acts of violence occur, including a bizarre attack on a school bus and the death of a chief suspect, the picture gets increasingly confused. Is the mother-and-baby Walker club involved in some way? What of the provenance of the newer skull? For Coffin time is running out: the body count is rising and he needs to find a solution fast.
A Cold Coffin is a truly frightening read, with a shocking denouement, and is an excellent addition to Gwendoline Butler's critically acclaimed series.

First British Edition CTPublishing (2000)

The King Cried Murder!
Welcome to Georgian-era Windsor Castle for the first in a series of historical crime novels by Britain's finest practitioner of the traditional mystery.
Set in the same period as the film The Madness of King George, a young Fanny Burney, not yet the famous novelist she is to become, is a maid-in-waiting to the Queen. The life of the entire castle is affected by the wanderings and ravings of the deranged monarch, and Fanny does the best she can to soothe her mistress in the midst of her troubles.
Then the murders begin…
Young women of the same age and appearance as Fanny are horribly killed, their throats cut by a knife wielding maniac. Major Mearns and Sergeant Denny, ex-secret service men in India and Canada are employed by Prime Minister Pitt to keep an eye on the King. Foremost in their minds is whether, in his madness, he could be responsible for the killings. Fanny's only recreation is the town's theatre, away from the relative safety of the castle, and Mearns and Denny find they must watch over her as well as the King.
Because in some strange way she has a connection to the murders…
Gwendoline Butler is uniquely suited to use the daily life of Georgian Winsdor Castle as a backdrop for this series, being a Windsor-based historian as well as one of the leading crime fiction writers of our time.
Praise For Gwendoline Butler
'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
'Butler distills her own brand of disquiet: omnipresent and irresistible’ John Coleman, The Sunday Times
'Gwendoline Butler writes detective novels that, both in method and atmosphere are things apart, not only from the main body of crime writing, but even from the mass of general fiction... she achieves that real whodunit pull' Marcel Berlins, The Times
'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

First British Edition HarperCollins (1999)

Coffin's Ghost
Everyone has a few ghosts 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 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…

Paperback - HarperCollins (1999)

A Grave Coffin
The death 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: 'Ask Coffin', and it emerges that he had secretly been investigating internal corruption just before his brutal murder. Coffin is ordered to follow up the inquiry 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 have gone missing, and just as Coffin starts off in Seton's footsteps a child's body turns up - buried in a shallow grave on 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.
'Gwendoline Butler has not only created a durable series hero… but also does a consistently good line in mouldering corpses… the atmosphere of suspicion and betrayal in official circles that the author expertly conjures up is reminiscent of le Carre's Circus in Smiley's day. An excellent, unnerving read.' James Melville, Ham & High
'The books are intelligently written and capture the reader's interest in the stories of the various characters who fill them' Donna Leon, Sunday Times

About The Author
Gwendoline Butler is one of the most universally praised of English mystery authors, under both her own name and that of Jennie Melville, and has written over fifty novels under both names. Educated at Haberdashers she read history at Oxford, later marrying Dr Lionel Butler, Principal of Royal Holloway College. She has one daughter.
Gwendoline Butler's crime novels are hugely popular in both Britain and the United States, and her many awards include the Crime Writers' Association's Silver Dagger. She was selected as being one of the top two hundred crime writers in the world by The Times and her Coffin series has now been optioned for television. There are twenty-four John Coffin mysteries, eighteen Charmian Daniels mysteries and ten non-series thrillers in print in over twenty countries world wide. Only in her native England are so few of her books available in paperback!
Gwendoline Butler is a Londoner, and was born in a part of South London for which she still has a tremendous affection, and which, under the guise of the Second City of London, is the setting for her Coffin novels, its policing being in the capable hands of Commander John Coffin whose cases now span more than fifteen titles. John Coffin made his first appearance in Death Lives Next Door, first published in 1960 and reissued as a title in The Crime Club Diamond Jubilee Collection in 1990. Other Coffin titles include Coffin on the Water, his baptismal case on demob in 1946; Coffin in Fashion, set in the swinging 'sixties with a lively rag trade background; Coffin Underground, which takes place in 1978 when the South London area is in transition and subject to some very dangerous games; and Coffin in the Black Museum and Coffin and the Paper Man with Coffin established in the heart of the old Docklands where crime is one of the few things to resist the process of gentrification.
Gwendoline Butler also writes as Jennie Melville

Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

Coffin Knows the Answer (Allison & Busby, 2002) Mar 02

A Cold Coffin (HarperCollins, 2000)

The King Cried Murder! (CTPublishing, 2000)

Coffin's Ghost (HarperCollins, 1999)

A Grave Coffin (HarperCollins, 1998) HarperCollins Pbk Aug 99 (John Coffin)

Coffin's Game (HarperCollins, 1997) Collins Crime Pbk 1998 (John Coffin)

A Double Coffin (HarperCollins, 1996) HarperCollins Pbk 1998 (John Coffin)

A Dark Coffin (HarperCollins, 1995) (John Coffin)

The Coffin Tree (Collins, 1994) (John Coffin)

A Coffin for Charley (Collins, 1993) (John Coffin)

Cracking Open a Coffin (Collins, 1992) (John Coffin)

Coffin on Murder Street (Collins, 1991) (John Coffin)

Coffin and the Paper Man (Collins, 1990) (John Coffin)

Coffin in the Black Museum (Collins, 1989) (John Coffin)

Coffin Underground (Collins, 1988) (John Coffin)

Coffin in Fashion ( 1987)

Coffin on the Water (Collins, 1986) (John Coffin)

The Red Staircase (Collins, 1980) Non-crime

The Brides of Friedberg (Macmillan, 1977) historical

The Vesey Inheritance (Macmillan, 1976) historical

A Coffin for the Canary (Macmillan, 1974) (John Coffin)

A Coffin for Pandora (Macmillan, 1973) historical

A Coffin From The Past (Bles, 1970) (John Coffin)

Coffin's Dark Number (Bles, 1969) (John Coffin)

Coffin Following (Bles, 1968) (John Coffin)

A Nameless Coffin (Bles, 1966) CTPublishing Pbk Jul 99 (John Coffin)

Coffin in Malta (Bles, 1964) (John Coffin)

Coffin Waiting (Bles, 1963) (John Coffin)

Coffin for Baby (Bles, 1962) (John Coffin)

Coffin In Oxford (Bles, 1962) CTPublishing Pbk 1998 (John Coffin)

Make Me a Murderer (Bles, 1961) (John Coffin)

Death Lives Next Door (Bles, 1960) a.k.a. Dine and Be Dead (John Coffin)

The Interloper (Bles, 1959)

The Murdering Kind (Bles, 1958) ( Winter)

The Dull Dead (Bles, 1958) ( Winter)

Dead in a Row (Bles, 1957) ( Winter)

Receipt for Murder (Bles, 1956) ( Winter)