Coffin Knows the Answer
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A gripping exploration of hidden desires and terrors, Coffin Knows the Answer poses some disturbing questions about identity and relationships in the modern world.
With his wife, the acclaimed actress Stella Pinero, away on a movie shoot in Scotland, Chief Commander John Coffin is at a bit of a loose end with just the cat and dog for company. But one morning, as he checks through the mail for his wife, he gets a rather unpleasant surprise: horrific pictures of badly abused children sent anonymously to Stella. Rather than worry his wife, he vows to track down the culprit and calls in a trusted colleague, DCI Phoebe Astley, to assist him in his inquiries.
As they investigate Stella's stalker, another serious problem faces the detectives of the Second City of London. Several young girls have been murdered in Spinnergate with distinct and brutal similarities between the cases. Is there a serial killer on the loose? What is the connection to Stella Pinero, or is it all coincidence? As the investigations get closer to each other in focus, Coffin starts to feel that there are very personal motives at play as his wife's tormentor racks up the tension. When excavations near St Luke's unearth a chilling secret buried in the grounds of Stella's theater, John feels the net closing around those nearest to him and must act quickly or risk losing all that he holds dear.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Scamps and scalawags abound in Billheimer's fourth Owen Allison mystery (after 2001's Dismal Mountain), in which the transportation inspector returns to his native Barkley, W.Va., to help his ailing mother. When an impoundment dam atop the Canaan II coal mine bursts and sends a flood of coal slurry washing through nearby Drybone Hollow, wiping out a bridge, two trailers and a few unfortunate people, Owen finds his expertise as a "failure analyst" in great demand. The dam's collapse loosed not only the coal slurry but a horde of scam artists. While some of the scams are of the almost blameless sort, such as government fraud, others are more serious, such as defrauding the government. The author adroitly catches the phrases and speech patterns of oddball characters like the Reverend Moral Brody, who rides a Harley and wears a black leather jacket emblazoned with "HEAVEN'S ANGELS." A peaceable and decent sort, Owen is fond of the locals, but has a healthy appreciation of their deceitful ways. He needs all his patience and skill to untangle the deadly threats from the merely mendacious as kidnapping, kickbacks, blackmail, fraud and murder once again flow through coal country. Billheimer's West Virginia is unlikely to please the state's tourism bureau, but it's a fine place for readers to visit for humor and homicide.
