Cold Coffin

Detective Chief Inspector Kate Maddox #2

by Erica Quest

When Detective Chief Inspector Kate Maddox hears of Sir Noah Kimberley's disappearance, she isn't overly concerned. After all, wealthy, older men who head their own companies have been known to walk away from their wives and businesses without a good-bye note. It happens all the time, as Kate has learned in her years of police work. But once Dr. Gavin Trent, chief biochemist at Croptech, Sir Noah's agriculture chemicals establishment, is found dead in the woods. Kate suspects that Sir Noah will not turn up in Majorca with a new playmate, after all.

Despite the overwhelming number of leads and suspects in the death of Dr. Trent-a man with no friends and many enemies-Kate cannot uncover a trace of the vanished Sir Noah. That is, until a break-in at an unoccupied estate yields his body in the deep freeze.

Genres: Mystery

181 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1990

About the author

Nancy Jean Buckingham was born on 10 August 1924 in Bristol, England, UK. In 1949, she married John Sawyer, born on 4 October 1919 in London, England, UK. They formed one of the most popular writting-team marriage. The first books published under her maiden name Nancy Buckingham since 1967, are classical gothic novels. In 1970s, they started to used the pseudonyms: Christina Abbey and Erica Quest. In 1980, they sold her first novels to Silhouette, and they mixed their names to create the penname Nancy John. They also published one novel as Hilary London. The last novels that they published are a popular police series as Erica Quest, protagonized by the Detective Chief Inspector Kate Maddox. Their last novel was released in 1992.

Nancy Jean Buckingham Sawyer was the eighth elected Chairman (1973-1975) of the Romantic Novelists' Association, and is now one of its vice-presidents. John passed away in 1994.

Reviews

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you remember the TV series Prime Suspect, you would probably like this title. It's a police procedural, which are not my particular favorite style of mystery (hence the 3 star rating), but as procedurals go, it was a good one.

It also deals with the Prime Suspect issue of a woman who came in as Chief Detective Inspector and is facing general hostility from her male superiors and subordinates. This is the second book in the series, apparently, and so these problems are probably less of a focus than they were in the first title. Those are a side issue to the primary story of interconnected murders of two of the top people in an agricultural chemicals company.

[Irene Sauman · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent British police procedural with a female detective inspector facing the usual gender issues in a male dominated profession. This aspect is not overdone however.
The story has enough intelligent twists and turns to be interesting. Worth looking at others in the series.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good police procedural that kept me guessing.