Coffin in Malta: Gwendoline Butler

Description from the book cover:

The varied inhabitants of Valletta, Malta's ancient, beautiful, and usually calm capital, are all too involved with one another to be trusted to find the murderer of the laundress's retarded son. It falls to outsider Detective Inspector Coffin, brought in from London's Scotland Yard, to be the catalyst that leads to the truth in this inbred and guilt-ridden community.

The New York Times Book Review said: "Makes the island of Malta and its people vividly alive to the reader..."

John Azzopardi, a lawyer who lived in London for several years, is as much the lead character in this story as Inspector John Coffin. Azzopardi has moved back to Malta, welcomed by family and friends. Very shortly after he moves into his apartment, there is a murder nearby. He awakes in the middle of the night, hears someone screaming, and hastens outside to see what is going on. Thus he gets pulled into the murder investigation. His cousin, Joseph de Bono is leading the investigation. But after much questioning, the police can get no answers from the people who were nearby when the crime was committed. Everyone seems to be afraid to talk but it is unclear who they are afraid of.

My thoughts on this book are very similar to my reaction to the first John Coffin book I read, Death Lives Next Door. The format of the mystery is unusual. The death does take place close to the beginning, but there is a large portion of the middle focused on questioning of suspects that goes nowhere. John Coffin shows up to help in the investigation but not until the last third of the book. There is more emphasis on personal relationships and interactions within the community than on the solving of a crime. Nevertheless I enjoyed the story and liked the writing style.

I would not necessarily recommend this particular book to anyone who hasn't already read books by Gwendoline Butler. The crime is horrific, but not described graphically or dwelled upon. However, the book does provide a good picture of Malta and its people, at least the Malta of the 1960s. The only other book I have read set in Malta (The Information Officer by Mark Mills) was set during World War II and the characters were mainly military people stationed in Malta at the time.

I do plan to try later books in this series although they are not easy to find. The John Coffin series was published over 4 decades, the 60s through the 90s. Gwendoline Butler wrote another series under the pseudonym Jenny Melville. The main character in that series was police sergeant Charmian Daniels.

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Publisher:  Walker and Company, 1985 (orig. pub. 1964).
Length:    224 pages
Format:    Paperback
Series:     John Coffin #11
Setting:    Malta
Genre:     Mystery / Police Procedural
Source:    On my TBR pile since 2005.

March 2020 Reading Summary

In March, most of my reads were crime fiction (and spy fiction, which I include under that umbrella).  I also read two books of historical fiction and a classic novel from the 1930s.

As the month wore on and the coronavirus situation got more scary, my reading leaned more to the comfort books. For me, spy fiction is included in comfort reading, so my reading of that genre may increase.

General Fiction 

Diary of a Provincial Lady (1930) by E.M. Delafield

This book is a satirical and humorous look at the life of a married woman with two children (and a cook, a French governess/nanny, and a maid or two), living in an English village, and dealing with money problems and the foibles of others. The diary format took some getting used to, but I liked it, and I am reading The Provincial Lady in London right now.

Historical Fiction

Bring Up the Bodies (2012) by Hilary Mantel

This is the sequel to Mantel's Wolf Hall; it explores the downfall of Anne Boleyn, from the viewpoint of Thomas Cromwell. I liked this book even better than Wolf Hall.

Margaret the First (2016) by Danielle Dutton

This very short novel tells the story of Margaret Cavendish, an unconventional 17th-century Duchess who dared to write and publish all types of literature when it was unthinkable for women to do this. I enjoyed the story very much, and learned more about those times.

Crime Fiction

A Quiet Place (1975) by Seichō Matsumoto

Crime fiction set in Japan, by a Japanese author. This book portrays culture and working life in Japan in the 1970s very well. My review here.

The Expats (2012) by Chris Pavone

A spy fiction thriller set in Luxembourg, although not your standard spy fiction story. I loved it. My review here.

Rest in Pieces (1992) by Rita Mae Brown

This is part of a mystery series that features a cat (Mrs. Murphy) and a dog (Tucker) as characters (in addition to humans). Not my usual type of mystery, but I enjoyed it. My review here.

Miss Silver Deals with Death (1944) by Patricia Wentworth

Miss Silver #6. As I noted in my review, this book has one of my favorite  settings for a mystery... London during World War II. And the mystery story is well done too.

October Men (1973) by Anthony Price

This is the fourth book in the David Audley series, a cold war espionage series set in the UK (and sometimes other countries) and usually featuring some historical element. In this case, Audley is in Italy. Although Audley is the central character throughout the series, each book is different and may place the focus on other characters. My review here.

Snow Angels (2009) by James Thompson

This is the first novel in the Inspector Vaara series. A very interesting setting: Finnish Lapland, a hundred miles into the Arctic Circle. There was too much violence, described graphically, for me. My review here.

The Second Confession (1949) and
In the Best Families (1950) by Rex Stout

When I embarked on comfort reading this month, Rex Stout was one of the first authors to come to mind. These two books are books 2 and 3 in the Zeck Trilogy; And Be a Villain is book 1 in the trilogy. Arnold Zeck is Nero Wolfe's archenemy, and in these two books Wolfe encounters Zeck once again.  

Dark Provenance (1994) by Michael David Anthony

Second book in the Canterbury Cathedral series. The protagonist, Richard Harrison, is an ex-Intelligence Officer who has taken on the position of Secretary of the Diocesan Dilapidations Board for Canterbury. By coincidence, a man he worked with in Germany at the end of the war is found dead nearby, and that man's daughter refuses to believe it is suicide. I enjoy these books more for the picture of life at Canterbury Cathedral than the mystery; this book was a good read.

Coffin in Malta (1964) by Gwendoline Butler

I read my first John Coffin novel earlier this year and enjoyed it very much. This book takes Coffin to Malta to investigate a crime and, like the earlier book I read, it features Coffin only later in the book.

Tiger in the Smoke (1952) by Margery Allingham

Albert Campion #14. Set in London a few years after the end of World War II, this is more of a thriller than the typical detective novel that Campion is involved with. My review here.

Death Lives Next Door: Gwendoline Butler

Death Lives Next Door is the sixth novel in the John Coffin series by Gwendoline Butler. The 34 books in the series were published from 1956 to 2002. In this book, published in 1960, Coffin is a Divisional Detective Inspector in South London. So, in a sense, this is a police procedural.

Dr. Marion Manning is a well-known and respected professor at Oxford University. She has a watcher who follows her around and watches her house, yet she is reluctant to complain to the police about it. (Now he would be called a stalker I am sure, although initially people in the neighborhood were afraid that they would all be watched, and the focus was not immediately on Marion.)

The story starts with Ezra Barton, on his way to see Marion, and thinking about whether he likes his life as a perpetual student. Marion has been his mentor since he came to Oxford and is not in any hurry for him to leave. On the other hand, his girlfriend is pushing him to move on and make something of himself. Since Ezra is 35, that seems reasonable, but he likes his life fine as it is. This is an important thread in the plot, but the story really centers around Marion, her neighborhood, her relationships, and her mysterious past.

In this book of about 250 pages, the crime does not take place until page 100 and Inspector Coffin does not show up until even later. He comes to Oxford for an unrelated missing person case. So you can see that not much of this novel is a standard police procedural.

My Thoughts:

Why did I read this book at this time? Partly because I acquired the book nearly 15 years ago. At that time, I had read about the author and I like police procedurals and I wanted to try the series. Then I just let the book sit. But another reason is that I have another book from the same series, set in Malta and published in 1964, and I want to read that one soon too.

This is a strange mystery, with an emphasis on personal relationships, but I enjoyed it and liked the writing style. Because it is unusual, I don't know if I will like later books in the series, but I will read the one I have and look for more.  I am sure the series changes over the years since it was published over four decades.

Readers who like the crime to happen early on in a book may not be pleased with the crime occurring later in the book. I liked the first portion of the book best, leading up to the death of one of the characters. Other reviewers did not like that section of the book and preferred the later portions of the book, as the crime is investigated and Coffin shows up.

In the first four books, Coffin is only a background character, and another detective, William Winter, is the protagonist. This novel was published in the U.S. as Dine and Be Dead. Actually neither title makes much sense to me in the context of the book, but that is not unusual.

Has anyone else had any experience reading this author? She also wrote under the pseudonym Jennie Melville.


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Publisher:  Worldwide, 1994 (orig. pub. 1960).
Length:    253 pages
Format:    Paperback
Series:     John Coffin #6
Setting:    Oxford, England
Genre:     Mystery / Police Procedural
Source:    On my TBR pile since 2005.