Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2300333 in Books
• Published on: 1992-04-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 219 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In Butler's latest procedural, ominous threats to a child galvanize the police of the fictional Second City of London and their commander, John Coffin, who is being investigated by an overzealous MP. Nell Casey, an American soap opera star who is appearing in a theater festival run by Coffin's sometime lover, Stella Pinero, turns to Coffin when her young son Tom's teddy bear is stolen and buried in their ok yard under a marker bearing the boy's name. Coffin soon receives the disturbing news that William Arthur Duerden, a suspected child molester and murderer, has moved into his district of command. While his officers search for Duerden and proof of a pederasty ring, the boy disappears. Suspected abductors include an actor who is part of the festival; Nell's former lover, who hates her and believes he is Tom's father; and Nell herself, who may have arranged the abduction as a publicity stunt. As the police laboriously seek the pederasts, Nell disappears. Butler ( Coffin and the Paper Man ) breathes life and energy into her well-crafted tale, set in the vibrant Second City, an area of London resembling the Docklands.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Big trouble in the Docklands area of London where Chief Commander John Coffin (Coffin and the Paper Man, etc.) heads the Police Force, living nearby in an old church that's been converted into apartments and a theater complex. His neighbor is actress Stella Pinero, longtime friend, onetime lover, who runs the repertory company recently joined by TV and stage actress Nell Casey, just back from the US with small son Tom and nanny Sylvie. Here, Coffin's problems start with the disappearance of a tour bus, passengers aboard, all of them found drugged--and one of them dead- -when the bus surfaces. The fatality is elderly loner Jim Lollard. He lived on Regina Street, whose murderous history and present-day perfidies were his life's work. Then Nell Casey's son is kidnapped, climaxing a series of chilling minor incidents, amid rumors of a known child molester in the area. Days later, Nell vanishes--and Coffin's job is on the line. A hard look into the past uncovers a lurid secret, and teamwork does the rest. Another of Butler's superior procedurals, marked by brisk pacing, a clutch of quirky characters, and an unflagging air of menace. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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