Gwendoline Butler Books In Order

Death Lives Next Door / Dine and Be Dead

Realizing with dismay that an obsessive and determined man follows her everywhere she goes, Marion Manning appeals to Scotland Yard Inspector John Coffin for assistance, unaware that her flamboyant companion Joyo may hold the key to the mystery.

A Nameless Coffin

John Coffin had a feeling that the cases of handbag slashing were going to lead him to something far worse, and when a similar case came to court in Murreinhead in Scotland, a court officer was viciously attacked.

Coffin Following

A crime novel in which Aaron Tyler and his poker club friends apprehend and accidentally kill an intruder in his house. Thus begins a descent into a web of violence that may cost them everything their jobs, families and ultimately their lives. From the author of THE LONG MIDNIGHT and SERPENT’S KISS.

Coffin On The Water

British Metropolitan Detective John Coffin investigates a spate of murders involving a deranged man who kills and mutilates people, offering each victim as a ”gift” to a famous actress from her dead son. K. AB.

Coffin In Fashion

A corpse in his new house leads Scotland Yard detective John Coffin on the trail of a murderer that leads him into the world of high fashion and into the arms of a gorgeous designer. AB. PW.

Coffin Underground

Scotland Yard Chief Superintendent John Coffin gives little credence to the evil reputation earned by the house at No. 22, Church Row that is, until he must investigate recent deaths there. PW. K. AB.

Coffin In The Museum of Crime / Coffin in the Black Museum

Detective John Coffin must find out who killed the man belonging to the severed human head found in an urn on the church steps. PW. AB.

Coffin And The Paper Man

Following the brutal stabbing of a young girl, John Coffin, chief commander of the Docklands district, receives a series of notes from ‘the Paper Man’ promising more bodies if the young girl’s killer isn’t caught. As the case goes unsolved, more bodies turn up, and now Coffin must find two killers. Martin’s.

Coffin on Murder Street

Inspector Coffin decides to investigate some strange goings on on Murder Street the most violent street in town when a man who thrives on reporting and even predicting murder disappears himself. By the author of Coffin and the Paper Man.

Cracking Open A Coffin

With his position as Chief Commander in question, John Coffin’s latest case, which involves two missing students, forces him to investigate his own personality and career and to reflect on his own life, loves, and betrayals.

The Coffin Tree

Wendy Law Yone opens her first novel with the phrase of a survivor, ‘Living things prefer to go on living.’ A young woman and her older half brother are expelled from their home in Burma by a savage political coup. Sent to elusive safety in America, the motherless siblings find themselves engulfed by the indifference, hypocrisy, and cruelty of an American society unable to deal with difference. Her brother’s inevitable suicide drives the unnamed narrator into the seclusion of a mental hospital, where memories of her childhood and the strength it ingrained in her are enough to heal her heart and return her to the outside world.

A Dark Coffin

Marriage is proving anything but dull for Commander John Coffin, keeper of the peace in London’s Second City. With grande dame of the stage Stella Pinero in his life, Coffin’s days lack no drama.’ ‘When the curtain comes down on opening night in Stella’s newly transformed theater, Joe and Josie Macintosh are found stabbed to death in their theater box. A curious note left next to their bodies reveals that Joe and Josie Macintosh have carried out a suicide pact. But the couple’s double suicide follows closely on the heels of an unexpected visitor from Coffin’s past: Inspector Harry Trent. Coffin worked with Trent years ago, and now Trent is searching for his identical twin brother a dangerous man; a man who might already have killed a woman; a man Trent fears might have threatened violence to the Macintoshes, the couple who fostered the twins as children. Coffin quickly realizes that the illusions of the theater mean that nothing is as it seems; such is the case in the Macintoshes’ apparent suicide. As Coffin investigates the couple’s death, he learns he must find not only their killer but also their true identities. And then there is the persistent, looming question: Who is Harry Trent and what is he capable of doing? The answer lies in the past bizarre, terrifying, and horribly real…
Coffin will find Stella’s knowledge of the theater indispensable if he is to solve this mystery of Jekylls and Hydes on both sides of the footlights

Double Coffin

Crime novel with a dark and authentic south east London setting.

Coffin’s Ghost

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 woman’s refuge. 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 troop a succession of horrible and violent events including sudden death.

Coffin’s Ghost is another sterling entry in a series that has been continually praised for its ability to delve into the darker side of life and will leave readers wondering just how safe their secrets are.

Coffin Knows The Answer

With his wife, the acclaimed actress Stella Pinero, away on a movie shoot in Scotland, Chief Commander John Coffin is at a bit of a loose end with just the cat and dog for company. But one morning, as he checks through the mail for his wife, he gets a rather unpleasant surprise: horrific pictures of badly abused children sent anonymously to Stella. Rather than worry his wife, he vows to track down the culprit and calls in a trusted colleague, DCI Phoebe Astley, to assist him in his inquiries. As they investigate Stella’s stalker, another serious problem faces the detectives of the Second City of London. Several young girls have been murdered in Spinnergate with distinct and brutal similarities between the cases. Is there a serial killer on the loose? What is the connection to Stella Pinero, or is it all coincidence? As the investigations get closer to each other in focus, Coffin starts to feel that there are very personal motives at play as his wife s tormentor racks up the tension. When excavations near St Luke s unearth a chilling secret buried in the grounds of Stella s theater, John feels the net closing around those nearest to him and must act quickly or risk losing all that he holds dear.A gripping exploration of hidden desires and terrors, Coffin Knows The Answer poses some disturbing questions about identity and relationships in the modern world.

Dread Murder

In the court of King George IV, Major Mearns an old dog of war and veteran of Willington’s army is the guardian of Windsor Castle. Some would call him a spy; he calls himself a ‘watcher.’ Working with his close friend, the resourceful Sergeant Denny, the pair maintain a cool facade behind which they go about their duties quietly and unnoticed. Unnoticed, that is, until the day Mearns receives a parcel containing a gruesome surprise: a pair of severed human legs. The legs belong to a fellow soldier. Casting aside official protocol, Mearns and Denny decide to investigate the murder themselves, also enrolling the help of a precocious young runaway, Charlie. But soon these maverick investigators find themselves up against all manner of obstacles and danger, not the least of which is the Crown Keepers of the Peace a unit of former soldiers headed by Mearns’s nemesis, Felix Ferguson. With more butchered body parts turning up in parcels and the number of deaths rising, our amateur investigators find themselves up to their necks in corruption and intrigue. Mearns struggles to keep Ferguson at bay, not only during the investigation, but also for the affections of the desirable Mindy, a maidservant in the castle. With the pressure on, can Mearns get to the bottom of the murders and win the heart of his ladylove? With Dread Murder, Gwendoline Butler delivers a cleverly cunning and old fashioned mystery that hides a gruesome murder behind its charming facade.

Meadowsweet/Brides of Friedberg

This is a romantic novel amid the royal splendor of Germany in the late 1800’s guessing. Parts read like a suspense novel. Looks good and sample reading interested me but I have way to many books to read to include another. This is up to you.

Butterfly

A romantic saga about an outsider who is born with both a golden talent and a tragic inheritance, a woman who is also a survivor. From the author of THE COFFIN TREE, A COFFIN FOR CHARLEY and CRACKING OPEN A COFFIN.