{"id":1232,"date":"2013-12-29T23:03:34","date_gmt":"2013-12-30T05:03:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1232"},"modified":"2013-12-29T23:03:34","modified_gmt":"2013-12-30T05:03:34","slug":"gwendoline-butler-a-dark-coffin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/gwendoline-butler-a-dark-coffin\/","title":{"rendered":"Gwendoline Butler: A Dark Coffin"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Gwendoline Butler had a long and prolific career, writing 32 John Coffin novels, 19 Charmian Daniels novels under the pseudonym of Jennie Melville, as well having a successful career as a romance novelist.\u00a0 I\u2019ve always been aware of her and we usually have some of her series under both her names on our shelves, but recently I was searching for a new (to me) British Detective Inspector and I thought I\u2019d give a Coffin novel a try.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>This one, published in 1995, is 26th<\/sup> in the series, so the characters and setting are well established.\u00a0 I found that I didn\u2019t feel any need to have read any of the other books though I was a bit curious about the relationship between Coffin and his well known actress wife, Stella Pinero.\u00a0 Butler is definitely of the \u201cold school\u201d of crime writing \u2013 i.e., she\u2019s done telling her brisk tale in a mere 250 pages \u2013 so this is a novel, like an Agatha Christie and a Ngaio Marsh, that with the right comfy chair you could finish in an evening.\u00a0 Sometimes there\u2019s nothing better.<\/p>\n

Butler is really good at setting a scene and creating a cast of characters who all fit into her narrative, which in this case is a fairly original one.\u00a0 Though she draws on the Jekyll and Hyde trope, the ending was a well earned surprise.\u00a0 She briskly sets the scene in Stella\u2019s theater \u2013 it\u2019s her own company with a new show opening, much riding on the outcome.\u00a0 She and Coffin live \u201cabove the shop\u201d so to speak, in a nifty tower where many steps are involved to get to the different parts of their apartment.\u00a0 As quickly as Butler lays down this fascinating setting and living arrangement (something a contemporary writer like Peter Robinson or P.D. James would have lingered over), she\u2019s on to her story.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a captivating tale \u2013 on opening night a couple is found dead in one of the theater boxes, with no one sitting anywhere near them any the wiser.\u00a0 Assisting Coffin in his investigation is Harry Trent, a reliable officer who seems to have a connection to the dead couple as well as a troubling twin brother who is always just off canvas.\u00a0 This is the Jekyll and Hyde portion, with the reader not sure which is which. Stella is understandably upset as her new show has to be shut down in the service of a police investigation, not to mention the bad publicity from two corpses inside the theater.<\/p>\n

Stella\u2019s able assistant Alfreda is often front and center in the narrative, even to giving Harry a place to stay while he\u2019s in town.\u00a0 Improbably, she appears to be a woman on the prowl, despite the fact that she lives with her adult son.\u00a0 With a cast of interesting characters and a well drawn city setting that isn\u2019t London, the story has some different as well as creepy elements – but never too creepy.\u00a0 Butler is too brisk a storyteller to linger.\u00a0 She\u2019s first and foremost a storyteller.<\/p>\n

I think a more modern crime novelist \u2013 Elizabeth George, Peter Robinson, Deborah Crombie \u2013 (just to name a few) would give the reader a complete sense of the setting, of the detective\u2019s every turn of thought, of every creepy ramification of the Jekyll and Hyde character created.\u00a0 To me, Butler is a \u201cbridge\u201d novelist.\u00a0 She began her career in 1959 while several of the Golden Age authors (Christie and Marsh specifically) were still at work.\u00a0 She uses their brisk playbook as her template.\u00a0 In this late in the series novel she\u2019s bringing a bit of psychological depth to both her villain and her main character, but she\u2019s stuck to the storytelling parameters set down by the Golden Age ladies.<\/p>\n

Just a few years after Butler started writing, P.D. James (1962) and Ruth Rendell (1964) began their careers.\u00a0 They too began writing within the golden age parameters \u2013 early books by both ladies are much shorter than their later efforts \u2013 but the psychological depth both women bring to their writing is already present in their first novels.\u00a0 Both James and Rendell continued to develop and in doing so (I feel) kicked off a second golden age of crime fiction, where much of the emphasis is centered on the aftermath of crime rather than the mechanics of the act of murder. \u00a0 Butler, while hewing to the first golden age, still created satisfying, enjoyable stories \u2013 the very kind of novels I prefer to read last thing at night.\u00a0 She\u2019s a bit forgotten now but well worth a look if you enjoy your Detectives British and to the point.<\/p>\n

(Used, various editions, $3.50)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gwendoline Butler had a long and prolific career, writing 32 John Coffin novels, 19 Charmian Daniels novels under the pseudonym of Jennie Melville, as well having a successful career as a romance novelist.\u00a0 I\u2019ve always been aware of her and we usually have some of her series under both her names on our shelves, but … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-1232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-oldies-but-goodies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1234,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232\/revisions\/1234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}