Cold Coffin

Detective Chief Inspector Kate Maddox #2

by Nancy Buckingham, Erica Quest

Detective Chief Inspector Kate Maddox, off-duty and watching a Polo match, is vexed when expected to help when local celebrity Sir Noah Kimberley hasn’t turned up to present the trophies. A missing husband isn’t a police matter! But her reluctant enquiries turn into a complex double-murder investigation. Meanwhile, her friendship with newspaper proprietor Richard Gower grows to romance. British Mystery by Nancy Buckingham writing as Erica Quest; originally published by Doubleday for the Crime Club

Genres: Mystery

303 pages, Kindle Edition

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 writing-team marriages. The first books, published under her maiden name Nancy Buckingham since 1967, are classical gothic novels. In the 1970s, they started to used the pseudonyms Christina Abbey and Erica Quest. In 1980, they sold her first novels to Silhouette, and combined their names to create the pen name 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.