The Coffin Trail

Lake District Mystery #1

by Martin Edwards

Oxford historian Daniel Kind and his partner Miranda both want to escape to a new life. On impulse they buy a cottage in Brackdale, an idyllic valley in the Lake District. But though they hope to live the dream , the past soon catches up with him...

Tarn Cottage was once home to Barrie Gilpin, suspected of a savage murder. A young woman's body was found on the Sacrifice Stone, an ancient pagan site up on the fell., but Barrie died before he could be arrested. Daniel has personal reasons for bcoming fascinated by the case and for believing in Barrie's innocence. When the police launch a cold case review, Brackdale's skeletons begin to rattle and the lives of Daniel and DCI Hannah Scarlett become strangely entwined. Daniel and Hannah find themselves risking their lives as they search for a ruthless murderer who is prepared to kill again to hide a shocking secret.

Genres: Mystery, Crime, Fiction, British Literature, Mystery Thriller, Thriller, Ebooks

306 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Martin Edwards has been described by Richard Osman as ‘a true master of British crime writing.’ He has published twenty-three novels, which include the eight Lake District Mysteries, one of which was shortlisted for the Theakston’s Prize for best crime novel of the year and four books featuring Rachel Savernake, including the Dagger-nominated Gallows Court and Blackstone Fell, while Gallows Court and Sepulchre Street were shortlisted for the eDunnit award for best crime novel of the year. He is also the author of two multi-award-winning histories of crime fiction, The Life of Crime and The Golden Age of Murder. He has received three Daggers from the Crime Writers’ Association and two Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America and has also been nominated three times for Gold Daggers. In addition to the CWA Diamond Dagger (the highest honour in UK crime writing) he has received four other lifetime achievement awards: for his fiction, short fiction, non-fiction, and scholarship. He is consultant to the British Library’s Crime Classics, a former Chair of the CWA, and since 2015 has been President of the Detection Club.

Reviews

[David Evans · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book having read some glowing reviews of The Lake District Mysteries. Perhaps it is a mistake to start with the first book of a series as there always has to be a lot of awkward scene-setting before the reader can relax and get on with enjoying the story. The whole of this volume seems to be taken up by an attempt to get the jigsaw of the characters into place in preparation for the next book. A good deal of back story is therefore woven into the plot which, otherwise, is fairly basic. I was irritated by the rather clumsy and gratuitous mentions of "boobs" and "tits" and intrusive foreplay. Sex has no place in a murder mystery, especially bad sex with the irritatingly vapid Miranda whom I sincerely hope rapidly becomes a murder victim in the next instalment as she sadly survives this tale. She is clearly unsuitable for Daniel (or Denial as I call him. Geddit?) As for Marcus!; the sooner these two are out of the way the sooner Denial and Hannah can get together as nature intended; an unstoppable crime detecting force whose bedroom expertise is taken as read and not actually read. And Daniel had better invest in a better book on British birds. His ornithological knowledge is dodgy describing quiet wrens, garden Ring Ouzels, diving herons, kingfishers nesting in vegetation as well as a gull that imitates the cry of a buzzard. Well that is a buzzard. Peterson, Mountford and Hollom's A Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe is a good place to start.
So not quite in the league of Anne Cleaves or Mark Billingham, let alone Ian Rankin. I will read some more on condition that Martin Edwards promises to dispatch Miranda.

[Bill Riggs · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice little English countryside mystery. Really more relationship drama than mystery but the characters and setting make the story interesting and you want to see where it leads. Obviously the first in a series that ends with a personal cliffhanger rather than professional. It feels like this could easily be a series tv series.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having recently returned from a trip to England that included an amazing three days in the Lakes, I fully understand why people fall in love with the area. When Daniel Kind and his partner Miranda impulsively buy a cottage, I started to look at this as a how-to-guide. Okay, not really but the area plays a huge part in the atmosphere of the story.

This is the second in the series that I've read. I'm actually going to re-read The Arsenic Labyrinth now that I've The Coffin Trail. The characters are well developed and the story moves along at a leisurely pace without being plodding. There are just the right amount of red herrings, not so many it starts to smell like a fish-fry but enough to keep you guessing. I have to admit I was enjoying the story so much, I really didn't guess who did it.

I really enjoyed this story and look forward to more in the series. I also look forward to getting back to the Lakes!

[Alan (the Lone Librarian rides again) Teder · Rating 2 out of 5]

Domestic Drama with Little Mystery
A review of the Allison & Busby eBook (2011) of the original Allison & Busby hardcover (2004).

‘There was a proverb I came across. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it.’ He took a deep breath. If only his translation skills weren’t so rusty. ‘It goes something like this. Skazhi s kem ty drug, a ya skazhu kto ty takov.’
...
‘The proverb, by the way, means Tell me who your friend is and I’ll tell you who you are.’

I've followed Martin Edwards' excellent work as the editor and introduction writer for the British Library Crime Classics series for over a decade. I also read a few of his short stories written for the Mysterious Press and thought they were terrific. So I decided to take the plunge and try out one of his full length novels. As a bit of a series obsessive, I went with this first entry of the Lake District Mysteries. Unfortunately it was a huge disappointment.


Alternate cover for my edition. It has the same cover blurb which says it is a "first-rate complex thriller", which has to be referring to an entirely different book 🤣.

Since it is the first of a series, you have to expect a bit of back story to set the scene and portray the personalities of the lead protagonists. But this just goes on and on with the domestic drama of both historian Daniel Kind and DCI Hannah Scarlett and their respective partners. It all centres around a cold case which is brought back into the limelight when Kind moves into the Lake District in a retreat from his life at Oxford, encouraged by his gf Miranda who wants out of London. The house they buy is a fixer-upper where a suspected local murderer grew up.

Meanwhile Scarlett is assigned to head-up a cold case squad, in somewhat of a demotion after a certain prosecution that she investigated fails in court. In her early years on the police force she was mentored by Kind's estranged father. With Daniel seeking to learn more about his father and to also perhaps clear the suspected murderer's name (who was a childhood friend) his path will cross with Hannah's.

This buildup takes an enormous amount of time with nothing much going on except for various shady characters making appearances as possible alternative suspects. Finally things begin to happen in the final 20% of the book. The solution comes out of nowhere, with little investigative basis. The end result even requires an Unsatisfactory Ending Alert.

One can only hope with Edwards' thorough investigations and readings of Golden Age of Crime classics that he was able to fashion more engrossing plots for his later efforts. This early 2004 outing is not reflective of any "first-rate complex thriller" writing skills.

[Seth Lynch · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was selected for the Isle of Man Crime Book Club read. I always feel I read the book s for this more harshly than I would if it were a book I’d selected myself. I had been thinking of reading a book by Martin Edwards as my future boss mention him in my job interview. He’s also coming to the Island on the 25th of June – If I am I’ll have to go a long to the Crime Evening he has organised. (as it turned out that was the day I left the Island so I missed this)

As for the book… It didn’t quite grab me. There were a lot of elements I really liked but there were too many inter-relationships. Nearly every character seems to have had an affair at some point and I felt this diluted the tension between the two main characters. There were some lines I really liked: ‘she had been pretty once, even her passport photograph couldn’t conceal that fact.’ And lines I didn’t: ‘…he couldn’t quite believe he’d taken things so far. Thank God their love for each other was so strong.’ There were a couple of times where a character notices that someone is sweating or red faced etc from a long distance away. As I read that it made me stop and think – can you really tell if beads of sweat are breaking out on someone’s forehead at a distance of twenty feet?

I made the mistake of reading the blurb on the front cover: 'A first-rate complex Thriller.' It is not a thriller in any shape or form. When I’d gotten about a hundred pages in I stopped expecting the thrills and started to read it for what it is – a modern day cozy. A slightly genre bending cozy but cozy non-the-less. It really felt like an episode of Midsomer Murders. Cozies aren’t really my thing but I like to read the odd one.

The way Edwards has set this up is nice. There are two main characters – an ex-Oxford don and a cop. The cop is working a cold case so and her ex-boss is the don’s late father. Her respect for his father means she (the cop is female) tolerates him more than she would otherwise. A cold case means there is no crime scene to be trampled over and gives scope for a non-cop to get involved. The location – a small village in The Lakes gives you an enclosed set of suspects. And Edwards plays by the rules of the Detection Club – no clues are withheld, no seemingly sane person turns out to be crazy (so not too much like Midsommer Murders) and he does not rely on co-incidences.

I pretty much worked out who had done it and why at about the half-way point. The line that gave it way for me came on page 190 of the 299 page novel. It wasn’t a line related to the crime and I don’t know why it triggered the reaction it did but as soon as read I knew what had happened. In fact I was only about 75% correct. It made reading the rest of the book different. It didn’t spoil it at all, I became interested in how Edwards would misdirect people. It was like watching a magician when you know the trick – you can still admire the skill and dexterity of the performance.

If you are into Whodunnits then this is right up your street.

Martin Edwards has a blog here: http://doyouwriteunderyourownname.blo... which I recommend. He is very knowledgeable about crime fiction and has good taste in films.

[Gerry · Rating 2 out of 5]

I do enjoy very much Martin Edwards' introductions to the British Crime Library Series of mysteries so when I spotted this title, particularly as it had a Lake District setting, I thought I would give it a try. Unfortunately it was not the success that I hoped for as it proved rather dull in places and the characters were somehow rather flat and lifeless.

The storyline was just about okay in that Daniel Kind and his new partner, the vapid Miranda, relocated to the Lake District to get away from the hustle and bustle of life down south and they purchased Tarn Cottage in Brackdale, once lived in by the Gilpin family, whose son, Barrie, was suspected of a murder some years previously.

Ironically Daniel's father was the lead detective investigating the crime but by that time he had left his wife and children for a new lady, so Daniel knew little about his father's later life. Daniel had met Barrie on his holidays in the Lake District and although Barrie was universally assumed to have been the murderer, Daniel was not convinced that he was a killer and nothing could be proved because shortly after the lady's body was found, Barrie supposedly fell down a ravine and was killed.

Daniel decides to do some digging and his investigations lead him to meet Detective Chief Inspector Hannah Scarlett, who had just been appointed to a newly formed cold case review team. Naturally he approached her, both to find out what her intentions were regarding the Gilpin case and also to learn about his father for whom she worked, and their relationship is an interesting one without developing into anything serious. But the rest of the characters are nothing exciting and it is difficult to empathise with any of them.

Rumours in the village abound but one prime suspect comes to light and it looked as though Barrie would be exonerated, particularly when another body is discovered. But, as they say, there was a twist in the tail but for this tale it was not at all convincing ... indeed, where did it suddenly come from? I just could not get it.

The Lake District ambience was the saving grace in a way, for that kept my interest but as a mystery and the first in a series it disappointed and, although I have volume two, it will be some time before I give it a try for I understand that Daniel, probably the best of the characters, his partner plus Hannah Scarlett and her nondescript partner are once again the investigating team.

[Bev · Rating 3 out of 5]

Daniel Kind is an Oxford historian and TV personality. His new lover Miranda works as a writer for a magazine. They both have things in their pasts that they'd like to escape and when they take a holiday to Brackdale valley, an idyllic part of the Lake District that Daniel had visited last when he was a boy, Miranda falls in love with the area. They immediately put a bid down on Tarn Cottage--a cottage with a past of its own--and ditch their respective jobs to make a brand new start. But the past--both theirs and the cottage's may catch up with them.

Tarn Cottage had belonged to the Gilpins, a widowed mother and her son. When Daniel had visited the place with his family, he had made friends with Barrie Gilpin, the son. Barrie, though he was born and raised in Brackdale, was always an outsider. People in those days had never heard of autism, let alone tried to understand it, and he was just considered odd. But Daniel didn't mind Barrie's ways and accepted him for who he was.

Later a beautiful young woman who Barrie had been smitten with is found brutally murdered and Barrie disappears. His broken body is found in a deep ravine and everyone is eager to believe that Gabrielle Anders's killer has been found and sent to his reward. Daniel's father, Ben Kind (who had since left his family for another woman), was assigned to the case. Neither Daniel nor his father were ever satisfied that Barrie had been responsible.

Now, years later, Ben Kind is dead, but his then subordinate DCI Hannah Scarlett has recently been assigned to the new Lake District Cold Case Squad. Daniel's mention of the the events of years ago, stirs things up a bit in the small community and soon Hannah's squad receives an anonymous phone call:

Everyone blamed him [Barrie Gilpin], said he'd murdered her because he was a pervert. But he wasn't, he was kind, he just had problems, that's all. It was so--so unfair. What I saw...oh God, I felt so terrible when I....

But the caller refuses to say exactly what she saw that made her doubt Gilpin's guilt. Looks like the squad has their very first cold case to investigate. With both the official police force and Daniel asking questions, it isn't long before memories are stirred and it winds up that not everyone told all they knew at the time. And then another death disrupts the idyllic valley. But when the case looks to be closed one more time...is it really over?

If you like your protagonists to come with baggage and maybe a little angst, then this is a stellar opening book in a new series for Edwards. If, like me, you'd rather not do the "Daniel's relationship looks to be in trouble" and "Hannah's relationship looks to be in trouble" dance, then it's still a good, solid opening book. I'm just not that into having our key players dealing with relationship troubles while also investigating murders. And, quite frankly, if Daniel can't see that Miranda (his lady) has stick-to-it issues, he's blind as the proverbial bat.

Okay...got that out my system. How about the mystery itself? It's a good one. Edwards lays down a good plot and manages to muddy the waters nicely around the suspects other than Barrie. I did spot the murderer--but I was way off-base on the motive. I missed the clue that would have told me all even though Edwards was obliging enough to display it not just once, but twice. Overall, this was a solid story with an interesting mystery. And I do like the characters of Daniel and Hannah. I'm looking forward to watching their storyline progress.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block.

[Cleopatra Pullen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title has been chosen for the name given to the tracks which were used to transport bodies from the remote village to one with a graveyard. The symbolism of bodies being strapped to the horses for their final journey is one that resonates throughout this book.

As the book opens we meet Daniel Heard and his girlfriend Miranda buying Tarn Cottage in the fictional village of Brackdale on a whim while visiting the area for a short break. Daniel has tired in his role at Oxford University but it is Miranda who is the driving force behind the move, after all as a freelance journalist she can submit her copy from anywhere. Daniel has visited the area before, the last holiday before his policeman father left home to be with another woman and while there he met, and became friends with, Barrie Gilpin who lived in Tarn Cottage. The cottage is being sold for a song because Barrie Gilpin was widely suspected by police and villagers alike to have murdered a young woman. He died of an accident before the murder was discovered and his poor mother was shunned by the locals.

Meanwhile DI Hannah Scarlett is wondering if she can get her career back on track after a disastrous collapse of a trial compounded by even more disastrous public relations. She finds herself leading a new team set up to examine whether advances in forensics can solve any of the old cases. With a retired detective to assist and her trusty partner they begin leafing through the old files.

As Daniel probes the villager’s memories about Barrie, treating this personal quest he begins to ruffle a few feathers to say the least and Miranda is none too pleased. With some loose ends to tie up about his father, who died without Daniel ever making peace, who was on the original investigation the claustrophobic nature of life in a remote village becomes ever more apparent.

I enjoyed The Coffin Trail which was first published in 2004 for being a ‘real’ police procedural series. There were no clever tricks but straightforward investigations by both Daniel and Hannah Scarlet into what happened to the young woman who was laid out on Sacrifice Stone, it can’t be accidental that this was the place for pagan rituals. There are lots of characters within this book and of course being the first in the series, more time is spent giving these a background to be built on later, this gave the first section of the book quite a slow feel, but with solid writing and the fabulous scenery that Martin Edwards captures, keeping me entertained, I certainly didn’t have a chance to become bored.

Once the investigation gets underway it appears that the crux of the matter is going to be examining those old alibis rather than the more straightforward DNA results that DI Hannah Scarlett’s bosses were hoping for. And we all know what that means, yes my favourite, old secrets and lies will be exposed! There is no doubt at all that plenty of skeletons, of the kind that hide in cupboards, are rattled. As secret after secret is revealed the inhabitants of Brackdale will most likely never be the same again.

After really enjoying the characters of historian Daniel Head and the fairly level-headed and yet not to be pushed around, DI Hannah Scarlett I am now looking forward to reading the second in this series, The Cipher Garden

[Shirley Schwartz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me as a first book in a police procedural series set in the UK, and, in this case, in the Lake District. I couldn't resist the title so I decided to read it. The book is very good indeed. We are introduced to quite a different protagonist. Daniel Kind is an Oxford don whose expertise is history. He has worked hard and has achieved tenure at Oxford University. Daniel has a backstory that is revealed intermittently throughout the book. To simplify, his father was a well-known detective in the police force who left his wife and family when Daniel was 12. His sister was a couple of years older. From that day forward his mother would not allow her children to speak of their father. We also find out that Daniel lost a previous lover, and the story behind that tragic loss is slowly revealed to us as the story progresses. When we meet Daniel he is on a road trip with his new girlfriend by the name of Miranda. They are travelling through the Lake District and see a cabin that is for sale. This cabin used to be the home of Daniel's friend Barrie Gilpen. On a whim they decide to chuck their lives in London and Oxford and move to the cottage to "get away from everything." The move turns out be a good thing for Daniel, but he does become embroiled in an old cold case that involved his friend Barry. Daniel, being the historian that he is, cannot help himself and begins to research this case to discover the truth. The main thing driving him on was that this was an old case of his father's which had ended unsatisfactorily . Daniel meets DCI Hannah Scarlett who has recently been put in charge of a new cold case division in the Lake District, and as Hannah used to work with Daniel's father, and as she had been involved in the original case, she decides to have her new team pursue this cold case first. Daniel and Hannah find each other during their separate investigations, and discover that they are a very effective crime-fighting team. After the whole village and countryside have been upset by the long-buried secrets that they uncover, they finally are able to solve this case. By the way the Coffin Trail is an old trail from centuries ago that mourners used to follow in order to inter their dead because there was no burial place in Brackdale, and this old Coffin Trail becomes integral to the story when foul murder is committed in Brackdale in the 21st century. The book is very well-written, and I have to admit that I did not figure out the murderer until it was revealed in the book. I'm definitely going to read more in this series.

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

On a visit to the Lake District, Miranda falls in love with the idea of living amid the quiet and beauty of the area, leaving her frantic London life behind. Her partner, Daniel Kind, is willing to go along with the idea, having fallen out of love with his academic life as an Oxford historian. So they buy Tarn Cottage – a place that, coincidentally, Daniel remembers from youthful family holidays in the Lakes. Back then, he had made friends with a young boy who lived in the cottage, Barrie – a boy who had later been suspected of brutally murdering a young woman shortly before he fell to his death among the rocks. Meanwhile, DI Hannah Scarlett has been tasked with heading up a cold cases unit, and the first case she re-opens is this old murder…

Edwards makes excellent use of his Lake District setting – its rugged beauty, the isolation, the mix of natives and incomers. I’d read a later book in the series and had therefore already met Daniel and Hannah, who are the main recurring characters in the series, so this one filled in their back story and developed them both as interesting and likeable characters. Miranda, even in this first book, is somewhat annoying and soon realises she longs for the bright lights she left behind, so it’s reasonably obvious she’s not going to be around for many more instalments.

The plot is very well done – as with most cold case mysteries, the temperature soon heats up when the investigation threatens to reveal long-hidden secrets. Much of the interest rests on the characterisations and Edwards is excellent at creating believable people who are morally textured – neither angelically good nor hissably bad, but flawed and human. I thoroughly enjoyed this and Book 2 is now on my wishlist!

www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com

[Eric_W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Daniel Kind and his new girlfriend have decided to leave their jobs and move to the country, to a country house that Daniel's childhood friend had lived in. Barrie, an autistic child, had been accused of the murder of a young woman whose body had been found on an old, archaeological sacrifice stone. Barrie could never be brought to trial because he had died that same night of the murder by falling down a ravine. Or was it more sinister?

Some lovely descriptive passages. One of my favorites was his homage to bookstores: He found it without difficulty, one of half a dozen small businesses grouped around a large yard. Most of the units produced and sold crafts of one sort or another: wall hangings decorated with Lakeland themes, pottery and wooden gifts, hand-made greetings cards, and teddy bears with large, beseeching eyes. The bookshop occupied a section of a converted mill, the rear of which overlooked a weir. Rain was rattling on the gravel and although Daniel ran from his car, his sweatshirt was soaked by the time he was inside. The rich aroma of Kenyan coffee blended with the smell of old books and he recognised the andante movement of Hanson’s Romantic Symphony coming from discreet speakers near the entrance. The front part of the lower floor was devoted to fiction and the rear to the café, which spilled out on to an elevated area of decking from which on a fine day customers could sit out and watch the beck rushing by.

Some reviewers have downgraded the book because they didn't like the characters. I'm not quite sure what they might think of Jim Thompson's or the Ripley books. I don't have that perspective. I don't need to like the characters, only to find them interesting. Here, they are intriguing. Admittedly, some of the coincidences were a bit unlikely, e.g., that DCI Hannah Scarlett should have been Daniel Kind's father's sergeant.

BTW, one of the joys of reading on a Kindle is the instant dictionary feature. I had no idea what a "beck" and a "weir" were. Respectively, they are "a brook, especially a swiftly running stream with steep banks" and "a low dam that is built across a river to raise the water level, divert the water, or control its flow." Both parochial northern England definitions. Nice words.

[Lyn Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

So much going on in relationships here that it's as much a soap as it is a mystery. The two central characters are clearly in relationships that should come unstuck. I wonder how long it will take for them to get together?
I quite enjoyed what will become a recurring partnership, I'm sure, between the detective and the historian, and the glimpses of the Lake District countryside.
Edwards could have written this with a television series in mind - it would translate well, especially if the characters' sex lives were implied rather than slickly presented as they are in the book.

[Shawna Millard · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was tedious at times, meandering here and there with odd scenes that tended to distract the reader from actually wanting to finish the book. Daniel also lost credibility as a character by being not only hard to relate to but seemingly shallow some of the time while trying to convince us he truly has some depth due to previous trauma. Hmmmm.

[Patricia Gulley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This whole series is fabulous. Read them all.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read the first of Martin Edwards' Rachel Savernake series, as well as many anthologies he's edited and introductions he's written for forgotten works from the Golden Age of crime fiction, reintroduced via the British Library Crime Classics series. He's also written two nonfiction books about the history of crime fiction in the twentieth century - The Golden Age of Murder, which I've read, and The Life of Crime: Unravelling the Mysteries of Fiction’s Favourite Genre, which I'm looking forward to reading. All that being said, this is a very strong first novel in a series and one that I really enjoyed. The protagonists, Hannah Scarlett and Daniel Kind, are multidimensional characters: both dedicated to their fields (a DCI and an Oxford historian, respectively), both with ties to the Lake District community they live in, both dedicated to solving puzzles and restoring justice to crime victims. There was a really juicy twist at the end that I didn't see coming at all, which was thrilling; having read so many books in this genre, it's become easy at times to figure out plots. A completely absorbing story in a beautiful (but deadly!) setting. I'm delighted to find a police procedural series that's new to me, with seven more books ahead for this British crime fiction devotee to devour.

[Romulus · Rating 1 out of 5]

Intriguing title, otherwise tediously cliche-ridden and amateurish. The author gives the impression of being of conventional mind and limited imagination. Cliche after cliche, plus some very fancy-silly-embarrassing similes and images.

Consider:

...rain greased his hair.
The ground was like glue under his feet...
…he could see the future unfolding with the vividness of colour pictures in a horror comic strip...
The pain was cruel...
He didn’t pray–he’d never been able to imagine God...
From the moment she’d seen the cottage, she had fallen head over heels...
The two of them were drunk with passion for each other...the way she let herself be swept by a tide of passion...
Louise backed her to the hilt...
Daniel felt lightheaded, as if a hypnotist had put him in a trance of happiness...
The estate agent smelled of bacon and burned toast and looked like a prime candidate for a coronary. Tubby and panting and over-dressed in tweed suit and camel coat, he was yet naked in his desperation to earn commission on the sale...
…the sun gatecrashing through the faded blinds...’

Mr Edwards is the current President of the Prestigious Detection Club —a post previously held by the likes of G.H.Chesterton and Agatha Christie — which makes one wonder about standards and criteria in the 21st century. Mr Edwards seems to have his circle of aficionados but it is a bit difficult to imagine any discerning readers among them. (I became curious about him after reading an incredibly feeble short story by him in the 2019 May-June issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.)

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a decent English mystery set in the Lakes district. There's nothing to make it stand out too much from many other books of its type.

The few interesting bits were
-the main male character's father left his mother when he was 11 or 12 for another woman. His mother was so upset that she made it exceedingly difficult for his father to see his son and daughter. The father, not wanting to make his children's lives part of the war between him and his exwife, gave up. Now the father is dead and the son is interested in knowing about him. And he was a police officer.
-the main female character, is a policewoman who worked for the father. She seems like she could be very interesting but the book did little with her.

I was afraid that the solution to the mystery was turning out to be obvious and ridiculous but there were a couple curveballs at the way end, uncovered by the male lead character.

I would read more in this series. It has potential to get more convoluted and interesting especially since I don't think there'd be a second book without the female lead. The male lead is an historian, not a police officer.

[LJ · Rating 2 out of 5]

THE COFFIN TRAIL (Amateur Sleuth-England-Cont) – Okay
Edwards, Martin – Standalone
Poisoned Pen Press, 2004- Hardcover
Daniel Kind and his lover, Miranda, buy a house in the Lake Country; a house once lived in by a boy accused of murder, who was found dead of an accident. Daniel's policeman father investigated the case, but Daniel never believed the boy was guilty. Now Daniel is asking questions and causes the police to take a new look at the murder. The locals are not happy, particularly when someone else dies.
*** The basic story, the descriptions of the Lake District and the overall writing were enjoyable. But this was offset by lack of character development, being irritated by the relationships of the two main couples, and the coincidences. The scene exposing the killer just wasn't realistic. I found myself having trouble caring about the story or the characters. It wasn't a terrible read, but there are many better out there.

[Charlotte · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh. This entire series is about two people who are so clearly in the wrong relationships from the very first page that reading about their dumb love-life choices for a couple hundred pages just becomes annoying. Also, would a series of horrible murders really take place in a tiny town in the Lake District in England? I couldn't suspend my disbelief long enough to get invested. Which was too bad, because I liked the main characters when they weren't being doormats for their shitty significant others.

[Brenda Funk · Rating 2 out of 5]

Actually not even sure it was okay....I picked this up because I was looking for a new series to get into. Well, won't be this one. Recommendations by Peter Robinson, Charles Todd etc made me think this would be a book on the same level. Not so. Personalities are flat and two dimensional, not to mention the author's annoying habit of assessing every female's body and sexuality. There is no room for that in a good, well thought, well written mystery. I'm just sorry I paid $10 for it on my Kindle. If I hadn't, if it had been a special of the day, I would likely not have finished.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Oxford historian and TV personality Daniel Kind and his new lover, Miranda, both want to escape to a new life. On impulse they buy Tarn Cottage in Brackdale, an idyllic valley in the Lake District that Daniel knew as a boy, a place so remote that the dead had to be carried out over the peaks on pack animals along the ancient Coffin Trail.

"Tarn Cottage was once home to Barrie Gilpin, an autistic youth suspected of a savage murder. A young woman visitor to the valley had been found laid out on the Sacrifice Stone, an ancient pagan site up on the fell. Barrie fell to his death near the crime scene before he could be questioned. All these years later, Daniel retains his belief in Barrie's innocence and questions his own policeman father's handling of the case. When DCI Hannah Scarlett and her squad launch a cold case review, Brackdale's skeletons begin to rattle.

"The wild geography of the Lakes District plays against local literary references. all backdrops to the lives of villagers and outsiders drawn to this beautiful spot -- but for what reasons? The Coffin Trail launches a new series by a master British hand."
~~back cover

I guess I've been spoiled. Normally novels set in the Lakes District are less gruesome, concentrating more on the lovely meres known to tourists. This one is tinged with a hint of malice, inbreeding, and suspicion of incomers, and a new murder underscores that atmosphere. The ending was a complete surprise, although on reflection, I understand that I didn't accord the one clue the attention it deserved.

[John Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do you get these feelings of deja-vu when you are reading?

In this case my very first inkling should have given me a clue but it didnt come for a few chapters until Daniel started to describe the semi derelict cottage they had bought and the practically wilderness of a garden in which it stood. As my read continued more bells started ringing, like when we found that Daniel's deceased father was a policeman and even more when we learned that the partner of his fathers old number two, ran a book shop which Daniel visited.
I checked my Goodreads Account but there was no sign of 'Coffin Trail' (although there was Coffin Road by Peter May but I remembered that and it was quite different.)

Eventually the penny dropped and a further check of my list threw up 'The Cipher Garden' the second in this series. Problem solved and seeing how much I had enjoyed it it allowed me to settle more into this one.

The 10 year old murder that was the centre piece of the tale provides the 'Who-done-it' element. The bleak atmosphere of the Lakeland Fells comes through well in the writing. A good cast of characters are well described and this time I was able to spot the culprit at about 75%.
From my earlier read of the next in the series, I should remember more about the relationships that are starting to flicker to life - but I didnt.

I reckon that I will just have to move straight on to #3, The Arsenic Labyrinth, before I forget what I have just learnt again. May be that will be the 5* that this so narrowly missed.

[Larry Fontenot · Rating 3 out of 5]

My wife has read all of the Lake District Mystery books and said I might like them. So I started with the first book and enjoyed it greatly. The characters all seem "fish out of water" and that makes them intriguing. Daniel and Miranda are most obviously out of their normal environs by choice. Hannah seems deeply embedded in her professional life but is recently challenged with a transfer she does not desire. These circumstances make the police procedural involving an old crime then a newer murder all the more interesting. I'll certainly be reading a few more of this series.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a fairly sedate read that is not big on blood and guts so even the faint-hearted won't be offended reading it. I had a slight inkling that the characters' names rang a bell and, after checking, I've just discovered that I read and reviewed The Frozen Shroud, the sixth book in the series, a year and a half ago. I've just started book two, The Cipher Garden, so look out for that review some time soon.

Full review on my blog : https://madhousefamilyreviews.blogspo...

[Will Templeton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, engaging characters, interesting story, nice twist ending.

[Karen San Diego · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is potential, but the plot of this one moved too slow. I can give the next book a try though.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up as it is the start of a seemingly successful series and I'm always a sucker for a good series. This beginning is OK, not great. The setting in the Lake District is part of what interested me and that certainly added to the story. The relationship between the two main characters just didn't ring true for me. Maybe it gets better as the books go on.

[Hilary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oxford historian and minor TV personality Daniel Kind and his (new) partner Miranda have bought a corsage in a small village in the Lake District. It turns out he is obsessed with finding out about his father, who was the lead detective on the case of the murder of an attractive young woman who was found naked on a flat stone at the top of a hill. No one was convicted but the police were sure the crime had been committed by an odd young man who is found dead near the scene of the crime. Daniel had known this man as child when on holiday in the area for two weeks, and he is also obsessed with clearing the name of his erstwhile friend.
The case is now the subject of a cold case review by a detective who had worked on the case with Daniels’s father. Cue romance?
It’s a clever plot, well written as you would expect from Martin Edward’s, but the denouement is utterly unbelievable as is Daniel’s crusade to clear the name of someone he had know for two weeks many years before. And no one in the book is likeable. I shan’t be reading the rest of the series.

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mystery set in the Lake District, featuring historian Daniel Kind, who leaves his position as a historian at Oxford and relocates with his new partner Miranda to Brackdale, where he once spent his holidays as a child and met a friend there named Barrie Gilpin. Daniel’s father Ben left Daniel and his sister and mother when Daniel was young, Ben going off to live with another woman in the Lake District. Daniel is curious now to find out more about who his late father really was, what sort of man he was, from his former colleagues in the police force, and from one in particular, DCI Hannah Scarlett, who admired and worked closely with Ben. Coincidentally, Hannah has been tasked with working on cold cases, leading the Cold Case Review Team, looking back into local crimes that were never solved, and one of these involves the murder of a young woman on a local landmark, the pagan Sacrifice Stone. This murder was assumed by most people at the time to have been carried out by Barrie Gilpin, who was subsequently found dead nearby on the very same night. But his guilt has never been proven, and it was a case that Ben Kind questioned. Now, thanks to a tip off in an anonymous phone call, Hannah is looking into it once again, and with Ben’s son Daniel on the scene and also believing in Barrie’s innocence, there is a determination to uncover the truth behind the secrets in this small close-knit community. However, naturally there are those for whom the past best lies well hidden, and who don’t welcome this digging around to unearth secrets long buried.

I was excited about reading this mystery, as it is the first in a series set in the Lake District, my favourite place in the UK, where I have spent many a happy week. It’s a good read and the characters are introduced slowly and built up nicely. In particular, the meetings between Hannah and Daniel, as Daniel can't resist getting involved with the investigation, and the story builds to a dramatic, tense conclusion. I believe there are currently five books in this series so far, so there are plenty more cases to read about involving Daniel and DCI Scarlett, and it will be interesting to see how Daniel's relationship with Miranda will fare, and whether they will both be satisfied with lakeland village life in the long-term. Looking forward to reading more of these thrillers soon, perhaps next time I am in the Lakes!

[Ken · Rating 1 out of 5]

As with Durdles some four and a half years ago, I too wanted to like this book and the series after learning of their existence from an interview Edwards did with the incomparable Peter Lovesey, and having bought the first six Lake District books, probably fortunately second-hand.

So far I've struggled through this one and had to give up on the second, The Cipher Garden, after not many pages because the dizzy and quite unstable Miranda was still present and unreformed, although she's probably not much worse than Daniel, who is supposed to be the hero.

It was a struggle to finish The Coffin Trail because of the gratuitous groping and bodice-ripping by the major characters. Presumably Edwards was encouraged by his editor to include all the soap-operatic swooning and pouting by both of the sets of "partners", all of whom are mature enough to know better, but all it does is interfere with the actual mystery. However by page 29 the groping and groaning made their unwelcome returns.

Get on with the mystery Edwards, I felt like shouting and leave the often-offensive and pointless padding out, you're supposed to be writing a murder mystery, not a titillating romance novel.

I'm regretting my purchase already, but shall try the next one in the series in the hope that, as Durdles hoped in 2013, the character Miranda is the victim, along with the DCI's complete dropkick live-in bloke.

At least Edwards may then have permitted the hero to marry the heroine so they can live happily ever after, thus allowing him to try to write a decent whodunit with minimal soap opera.