Coffin Waiting

John Coffin Mystery #10

by Gwendoline Butler

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192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Gwendoline Williams Butler (aka Jennie Melville)

Gwendoline Williams was born on 19th August 1922 in South London, England, UK, daughter of Alice (Lee) and Alfred Edward Williams, her younger twin brothers are also authors. Educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she read History, and later lectured there. On 16th October 1949, she married Dr Lionel Harry Butler (1923-1981), a professor of medieval history at University of St. Andrews and historian, Fellow of All Souls and Principal of Royal Holloway College. The marriage had a daughter, Lucilla Butler.

In 1956, she started to published John Coffin novels under her married name, Gwendoline Butler. In 1962, she decided used her grandmother's name, Jennie Melville as pseudonym to sign her Charmian Daniels novels. She was credited for inventing the "woman's police procedural". In addition to her mystery series, she also wrote romantic novels. In 1981, her novel The Red Staircase won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association.

Reviews

[Kim]

"Mood is the general feeling or atmosphere that a piece of writing creates within the reader. Mood is produced most effectively through the use of setting, theme, voice and tone." I had to use Google to find these words to describe how I feel about the Coffin mysteries.

Gwendoline Butler includes indications of what the characters are actually thinking and hints at what might happen to set the mood of these mysteries. Details about unusual neighborhoods and characters contribute to the mood.

I've read most of the Coffin series, which are getting harder and harder to find. This one was particularly difficult to find, which might explain why Goodreads doesn't have a description of the plot or a photo of the cover. The other "edition" listed on Goodreads is an audio cassette, and the photo there (a black & white photo of some smoke) matches the cover of my Black Dagger Crime Series hardcover edition (minus the blue message in the corner stating "Complete & Unabridged! 4 audiocassettes").

I don't usually reiterate the plots of the books I've read, but because there isn't one listed here (and because I find the descriptions in Goodreads helpful for refreshing my memory), I'm providing the info from the front inside of the dust jacket:

"Life for many people orbited around Roxanne Roland, the beautiful, passionate, clever enigma who lived in a ramshackle house in Prince Consort Square, in a seedy district of London. Lonely people, stray animals---any 'lame ducks'---were attracted to her and she was well-known in the community for helping those in distress.

Young, attractive Juliet Duveen had been living with Roxanne for nearly three months, and so far the arrangement had been perfectly satisfactory. But the discovery of a dead bird on the doorstep worried Juliet enough for her to mention it to her friend and neighbor, Inspector John Coffin. However, it is when Roxanne discovers a macabre group of women in her sitting room---arranged in a conversation piece, but completely lifeless---that the horror really begins."