Gwendoline Butler


Gwendoline Butler, née Williams was a British writer of mystery fiction and romance novels since 1956, she also used the pseudonym Jennie Melville. Credited for inventing the "woman's police procedural", is well known for her series of Inspector John Coffin novels as Gwendoline Butler, and by female detective Charmian Daniels as Jennie Melville.

Biography

Born Gwendoline Williams on 19 August 1922 in South London, England, daughter of Alice and Alfred Edward Williams., her younger twin brothers are also authors. She was educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she read History, and later lectured there.
On 16 October 1949, she married Dr Lionel Harry Butler, a professor of medieval history at University of St. Andrews and historian, Fellow of All Souls and Principal of Royal Holloway College. The marriage had a daughter, Lucilla Butler.
In 1956 her John Coffin series of novels began publication under her married name, Gwendoline Butler. In 1962, she decided to use her grandmother's name, Jennie Melville as a pseudonym to sign her Charmian Daniels novels. In addition to her mystery series, she also wrote romantic novels. In 1981, her novel The Red Staircase won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association.
Gwendoline Butler can claim to be one of the most versatile women crime novelists. Her books have scored in four categories: modern detective stories, Victorian mysteries, Gothic stories and romantic novels. In 1973 the Crime Writers Association awarded her the Silver Dagger for ‘A Coffin for Pandora’. A former member of the Committee of the CWA, a member of the Detection Club, she took her degree in history at Oxford and her training in research ensures complete accuracy in every book.
She died on 5 January 2013.

As Gwendoline Butler

John Coffin Series

The leading detective in the first three stories was an Inspector Winter. He appeared too in the fourth story ‘The Dull Dead’ but by this time the young John Coffin had made his first appearance, and it was with Coffin that Gwendoline Butler continued.
There was a quantum leap for John Coffin, in 1989. Starting with the book ‘Coffin in the Black Museum’ his creator took him from south London across the Thames and planted him in east London, in an imaginary district that was obviously based on Docklands.
  1. Receipt for Murder
  2. Dead in a Row
  3. The Murdering Kind
  4. The Dull Dead
  5. The Interloper
  6. Death Lives Next Door a.k.a. Dine and Be Dead
  7. Make Me a Murderer
  8. Coffin in Oxford
  9. A Coffin for Baby
  10. Coffin Waiting
  11. Coffin in Malta
  12. A Nameless Coffin
  13. Coffin Following
  14. Coffin's Dark Number
  15. A Coffin from the Past
  16. A Coffin for Pandora
  17. A Coffin for the Canary
  18. Coffin On the Water
  19. Coffin in Fashion
  20. Coffin Underground
  21. Coffin in the Museum of Crime a.k.a. Coffin in the Black Museum
  22. Coffin and the Paper Man
  23. Coffin on Murder Street
  24. Cracking Open a Coffin
  25. A Coffin For Charley
  26. The Coffin Tree
  27. A Dark Coffin
  28. A Double Coffin
  29. Coffin's Game
  30. A Grave Coffin
  31. Coffin's Ghost
  32. A Cold Coffin
  33. A Coffin for Christmas
  34. Coffin Knows the Answer

    Major Mearns and Sergeant Denny Series

  35. The King Cried Murder
  36. Dread Murder

    Single novels

Charmian Daniels Series

  1. Come Home and Be Killed
  2. Burning Is a Substitute for Loving
  3. Murderers' Houses
  4. There Lies Your Love
  5. Nell Alone
  6. A Different Kind of Summer
  7. A New Kind of Killer, an Old Kind of Death a.k.a. A New Kind of Killer
  8. Murder Has a Pretty Face
  9. Death in the Garden a.k.a. Murder in the Garden
  10. Windsor Red
  11. A Cure for Dying a.k.a. Making Good Blood
  12. Witching Murder
  13. Footsteps in the Blood
  14. Dead Set
  15. Whoever Has the Heart
  16. Baby Drop a.k.a. A Death in the Family
  17. The Morbid Kitchen
  18. The Woman Who Was Not There
  19. Revengeful Death
  20. Stone Dead
  21. Dead Again
  22. Loving Murder

    Single novels