A Dark Coffin - Hardcover

Butler, Gwendoline

3.43

47 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312145772 ISBN 13: 9780312145774

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 1996

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After a theatrical performance, two corpses are found in the theater, and Commander John Coffin is called in to find out if the two victims carried out a bizarre suicide pact or if they were the first casualties in a murder plot.

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From the Back Cover:

Sad, savage and bitter is what Stella Pinero says to her husband John Coffin, Commander of London's Second City, of the murder case which cuts into both their lives.

Coffin is at the height of his powers when he is surprised by a visit from the past: Inspector Harry Trent, with whom Coffin had worked years ago, is looking for his identical twin brother- a dangerous man; a man who might already have killed a woman; a man Trent fears might threaten violence to the Macintoshes, the couple who fostered the twins as children.

When Joe and Josie Macintosh are found stabbed to death, Coffin has to discover not only their killer, but their true identities. And even more important is the question hanging over all of them: who is this man called Harry Trent and what is he capable of? The answer lies in the past- bizarre, terrifyingly and horribly real...

ACCLAIM FOR GWENDOLINE BUTLER:

"Gwendoline Butler writes detective novels that both in method and atmosphere are things apart...she achieves that real whodunit pull".
'The Times'

'The Coffin Tree'
"I continue to find her weave of mystery and menace quite special and enthralling".
John Coleman, 'Sunday Times'

'A Coffin for Charley'
"Butler distils her own brand of disquiet: omnipresent and irresistible".
John Coleman, 'The Sunday Times'

'Cracking Open a Coffin'
"The imaginary Second City of London...together with its well-drawn characters, make this one a quietly compelling read".
John Welcome, 'Irish Independent'

'Coffin on Murder Street'
"Manages at least one between-the-eyes surprise and that's rarer than you think".
Matthew Coady, ' Guardian'

'Coffin and the Paper Man'
"Butler pens a superior procedural, limning her chosen area of London as it undergoes the throes of physical and sociological change".
' Publishers Weekly'

About the Author:

Gwendoline Butler writes under her own name and the pseudonym Jennie Melville. Educated at Haberdashers, she read history at Oxford, and later married Dr. Lionel Butler, Principal of Royal Holloway College. She has one daughter. She is a winner of the Crime Writers’ Association’s Silver Dagger Award. She was also selected as being one of the top two hundred crime writers in the world by The London Times. She lives in Surrey, England.

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