Tangled Web UK Review December 2000
A Cold Coffin by
Gwendoline Butler
hbk out November 00
Published by HarperCollins
at £16.99
John Coffin, Chief Commander of Police in the Second City of London, is faced with a series of murders which severely test him and his force. First a mother, a Mrs Jackson, and her two daughters are shot. Then Dr Murray, an archaeologist working on an excavation near Coffin's office, is found dead in the medical museum of the big teaching hospital that was attached to Second City University, with skulls arranged in a pattern round her head. The next to die is Black Jack Jackson, a local villain and son of Mrs Jackson. Narie Rudkin is shot, but not killed, at a christening and this is followed by another multiple killing of a young mother and her children. A school bus is shot at, but nobody is killed. Coffin, though Chief Commander and able to delegate, takes over the investigation and arouses the irritation of some of his team, one of whom, DI Larry Lavender, calls a meeting in the Leaping Lady pub to air his views and to gauge the reactions of his colleagues. Coffin is not impressed: "I know I irritate when I interfere on the detection side, on the other hand my,clear-up rate is good, and it is part of my Job to be successful." And successful he is, as we know he will be.
A Cold Coffin is Coffin at his best. The Second City of London, Gwendoline Butler tells us in a prefatory note, was an idea propounded by David Owen in the 1988 Barnett Memorial Lecture. The idea fascinated her and she made use of it to create a world for her detective, She offers enough detail to make the place credible and Coffin presides over an impressive police machine, There is also a large number of non-police personnel and the author frequently shifts her point of view to give the reader a rounded picture. And two of the most interesting and convincing are non-human: Gus, Coffin's dog, who has just recovered from a heart bypass operation whose "illness and the subsequent operation must clearly have been Coffin's fault...(but) it was nice to see him again and he would be forgiven in time" and the little cat which quickly becomes the cat of the house. Only an animal lover could write so convincingly. An excellent read. There is something here for everybody
(
John Boyles
)
