Coffins Game

John Coffin Mystery #29

by Gwendoline Butler

Following a terrorist bombing, the battered corpse of a woman is found in a house on Percy Street in the Second City of London. Her fingertips have been removed and her face made unrecognizable by a sadistic killer.The only clue to her identity is a handbag, and the owner of the handbag is Stella Pinero, the beloved actress wife of Chief Commander John Coffin. Several things complicate the investigation into the murder. Coffin refuses to believe that the remains could be Stella's.In addition, Coffin does not welcome the uncomfortable questions posed by Chief Superintendent Archie Young about the tempestuous Stella's personal life. And all the while the secretive Inspector Lodge of the Terrorist Squad harbors suspicions of his own.

Genres: Mystery, Crime, Audiobook, Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Gwendoline Williams Butler (aka Jennie Melville)

Gwendoline Williams was born on 19th August 1922 in South London, England, UK, daughter of Alice (Lee) and Alfred Edward Williams, her younger twin brothers are also authors. Educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she read History, and later lectured there. On 16th October 1949, she married Dr Lionel Harry Butler (1923-1981), a professor of medieval history at University of St. Andrews and historian, Fellow of All Souls and Principal of Royal Holloway College. The marriage had a daughter, Lucilla Butler.

In 1956, she started to published John Coffin novels under her married name, Gwendoline Butler. In 1962, she decided used her grandmother's name, Jennie Melville as pseudonym to sign her Charmian Daniels novels. She was credited for inventing the "woman's police procedural". 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.

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read

[Terese · Rating 3 out of 5]

This the third I have read. I typically start off thinking, ‘don’t think I’ll bother again’, but they are a slow burn and soon I am engrossed. Love the concept of the Second City. Coffin and Stella are great characters.

[Janice · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Coffin is a policeman in the Second City area of London. His beautiful wife, Stella, is an actress that does her own thing. This time Coffin is called to a murder scene after some terrorist's bombings and the murder victim is dressed to look like Stella with mashed in face and fingertips cut off, it takes awhile to ID the victim. Meanwhile Stella is missing and Coffin has to find his wife and find out how she is connected to the case. I have a bunch of Coffin paperbacks that I go to sometimes when out of reading material. It's been awhile since I'd read a Coffin mystery and this was one I'd not yet read. I don't remember before feeling a similarity between the Coffin and Phoebe characters in these stories with Elizabeth George's Lynley and Havers characters, but this time I did. I like Coffin and Phoebe but have never liked his wife Stella's character and often get tired of reading the story lines around her.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not doing very well lately! This one failed to thrill me and in the end i got bogged down with it and lost the plot somewhere along the lines! :(