From the archive….
The Coffin Trail by Martin Edwards (Poisoned Pen Press,
October 2004) is the first book in the author’s Lake District mystery series,
which now has seven titles. He has also written eight mysteries featuring
lawyer Harry Devlin. Edwards is perhaps better known as a crime fiction critic
and anthologist, which is unfortunate, because his mysteries are fine reads.
Daniel Kind, an Oxford historian, visits a childhood
vacation spot in England’s scenic Lake District with his new lover Miranda,
where they impulsively buy a run-down home and decide to leave their urban
lives to start over. Part of his interest in the village is in clearing the
name of a local youth he’d been friends with during the long-ago holiday and
who since then had been unofficially blamed for the gruesome murder of a
tourist. About the same time DCI Hannah Scarlett of the local police force is assigned
to clear up a number of cold cases, including this one. DCI Scarlett carries
out her official investigation in parallel with Kind’s informal questioning of
the long-time residents, both of which upset a lot of people for different
reasons. They each gather essential clues that eventually they jointly assemble
into a resolution that has a further twist at the very end.
Kind serves as tour guide to Miranda, in between wrangling
with the local contractors they have hired to renovate the house, which allows
the story to showcase the geographical features of the Lake District. Setting is sometimes referred to as an
additional character in a story; in this one the rich descriptions of the region’s
hills and landmarks nearly elbow everyone else off the page.
This
book was nominated for the Theakston Old
Peculier Crime Writing Festival’s prize for
best British crime novel of 2006.
- Series: Lake District Mysteries
- Hardcover: 312 pages
- Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press; First Edition
(October 1, 2004)
- ISBN-10: 1590581296
- ISBN-13: 978-1590581292
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3GYdbzS
Aubrey Hamilton © 2017, 2025
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal
IT projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
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