A Grave Coffin - Softcover

Butler, Gwendoline

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006510124 ISBN 13: 9780006510123

Publisher: Harper, 1999

Synopsis

‘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?

About this title

Review:

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

‘Butler distils her own brand of disquiet: omnipresent and irresistible’
Sunday Times

From the Back Cover:

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.

A chilling novel of psychological suspense, 'A Grave Coffin' grips the reader from the very first page.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0006510124
• ISBN 13: 9780006510123
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256