Gwendoline Butler

Gwendoline Butler (b. 1922, South London) is a writer of mystery fiction credited for inventing the "woman's police procedural" and known for her series of Inspector John Coffin novels. She has also published a series featuring female detective Charmian Daniels under the pseudonym Jennie Melville. Butler read history at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and later lectured there; her husband, the historian Lionel Butler, Fellow of All Souls and Principal of Royal Holloway College, died in 1992.

Selected works

• Death Lives Next Door (1960)
• Make Me a Murderer (1961)
• Coffin in Oxford (1962)
• A Coffin for Baby (1963)
• Coffin Waiting (1964)
• A Coffin in Malta (1964)
• A Nameless Coffin (1966)
• Coffin Following (1968)
• Coffin’s Dark Number (1969)
• A Coffin from the Past (1970)
• A Coffin for the Canary (1974)
• Coffin on the Water (1986)
• Coffin in Fashion (1987)
• Coffin Underground (1988)
• Coffin in the Black Museum (1989)
• Coffin and the Paper Man (1991)
• Coffin on Murder Street (1992)
• Cracking Open a Coffin (1993)
• A Coffin for Charley (1994)
• The Coffin Tree (1994)
• A Dark Coffin (1995)
• A Double Coffin (1996)
• Coffin’s Game (1997)
• A Grave Coffin (1998)
• Coffin’s Ghost (1999)
• A Cold Coffin (2000)
• Coffin Knows the Answer (2002)

References

• Murder Will Out: The Detective in Fiction, T. J. Binyon (Oxford, 1989) ISBN 0-19-219223-X p. 119
• Patricia Craig and Mary Cadogan, The lady investigates, Oxford (1981) ISBN 0-19-281938-0 p. 228

External links

• Gwendoline Butler at Fantastic Fiction
• Bibliography at Classic Crime Fiction
• Interview by John Kennedy Melling at Crime Time