The Coffin Trail A Lake District Mystery by
Martin Edwards
hbk out July 04
Published by Allison Busby
at £10.99
Leaving Liverpool and his Martin Devlin series, Martin Edwards moves to
the Lake District for the first of what looks like a new saga, where the sleuth
is a woman DCI, Hannah Scarlett. She is currently in the dog-house for
losing a high-profile case and is shifted side-ways by her female ACC to re-
investigate old cases.
One of these is the unsolved murder, many years earlier, of a woman found
on a prehistoric stone on the fells, naked and with her throat cut. The
original suspect was Barrie, a strange lad with a mental disorder, who was
found dead nearby after a fall from a precipice. In parallel with this story,
the house where the lad lived is up for sale and is bought by Daniel Kind, an
Oxford historian and his journalist partner. Strange to say, he is the son of
the late and highly-respected senior detective who investigated the murder -
and Daniel had played with Barrie when they stayed at this house on holiday
years before. Daniel's father had never been convinced of his guilt and when
the case is re-opened, there is an anonymous phone call from a woman to
say she knows 'whodunit.'
There are various machinations between other characters, which give rise to
some potential red herrings, especially concerning the 'lord of the manor',
who has an attractive Russian-born wife. Hannah's partner, a local
antiquarian bookseller and Daniel's own partner, get aggravated with their
respective mate's obsession with the case and by the end, one can suspect
how things will develop in the next book in the series.
A good, traditional English village mystery, to be expected of Martin
Edwards - perhaps a bit long on coincidences, but with an excellent feeling
for a part of the country which is not used that much as the setting for crime
stories.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
The Coffin Trail A Lake District Mystery by
Martin Edwards
