From Publishers Weekly
From the capable pen of Gwendoline Butler (A Dark Coffin) comes Coffin's Ghost, starring John Coffin, Chief Commander of the Second City of London's Police. When a package marked with Coffin's initials and full of dismembered limbs turns up outside of a battered women's shelter, Coffin doggedly pursues the investigation even as his buried past comes back to haunt him. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Coffin's Ghost FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Everyone has a few ghosts in their closets, but John Coffin, Chief Commander of the Second City of London's Police, believes that his are all safely tucked away. In fact, recently recovered from a gunshot wound, Coffin is hoping for a calmer life with his actress wife Stella Pinero." However, life has other plans for him. Coffin learns that all of his ghosts are not behind him when a parcel containing dismembered limbs is found outside a women's shelter. The Serena Seddon Shelter for battered wives is located on Barrow Street, not far from Coffin's own home. But the link to Coffin is more sinister than mere proximity: his initials are written on the package and the shelter is housed in the building where he lived when he first arrived in the Second City. This discovery opens a door through which a succession of horrible and violent events troop.
FROM THE CRITICS
Deadly Pleasures
. . . a very good police procedural.
Publishers Weekly
From the capable pen of Gwendoline Butler (A Dark Coffin) comes Coffin's Ghost, starring John Coffin, Chief Commander of the Second City of London's Police. When a package marked with Coffin's initials and full of dismembered limbs turns up outside of a battered women's shelter, Coffin doggedly pursues the investigation even as his buried past comes back to haunt him. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
John Coffin, Chief Commander of London's Second City police (A Double Coffin, 1998, etc.), lives in Second City with his actress-producer-theatre-owner wife Stella Pinero. But it's at his old address, a house on Barrow Street now turned into a women's refuge, that the first sign of trouble appears. On the front steps of the Serena Sheddon Shelter, someone's left two bundles-a message to J.C. on one of them-containing a woman's dismembered arms and legs. Inspector Phoebe Astley's review of recently missing females produces no positive result, but soon one of them, a woman named Henriette Duval who'd worked at the refuge, is found shot to death in a local car park. Also missing are Anna Michaels, a young reporter Coffin had once dated, and Alice, stepdaughter of Robbie Gilchrist, who, along with George Freedom, helps Stella with production and financing. (Even Arthur and Dave, Stella's housecleaners, are would-be actors.) Eventually, Alice surfaces with a pathetic story to tell, and even more eventually, Coffin puts together a blast from the past, a thwarted killing, and a nasty moneymaking scam that hits too close to home. Butler's style has grown ever more cryptic as her plotting has grown ever denser, but this outing will be heartily welcomed by Coffin's legion of admirers.
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