John Coffin

John Coffin is the title character in the John Coffin series of novels by British detective crime mystery author Gwendoline Butler. The series features detective John Coffin as the chief detective in a series of crime mysteries in London. We first meet Coffin in the first book of the series, the Receipt for Murder, where he is a leading detective in South London. Unlike his colleagues in the police department such as Inspector French, he is a highly ambitious officer that rises fast from lowly constable to the rank of Chief Commissioner in later books. He has been twice married, tying the knot with Stella a famous actress after the death of his first wife. While Coffin has come to represent the entire series of 29 books, he was a peripheral figure in the first three books. An Inspector Winter took the lead role before the mercurial John Coffin became the leading man starting with The Murdering Kind, published in 1958. Coffin really comes into his own when Gwendoline Butler moves him from South London and promotes him to Chief Commander of the Second City of London Police.