Part of Series
Following a terrorist bombing, the battered corpse of a woman is found in a house on Percy Street in the Second City of London. Her fingertips have been removed and her face made unrecognizable by a sadistic killer. The only clue to her identity is a handbag, and the owner of the handbag is Stella Pinero, the beloved actress wife of Chief Commander John Coffin. Several things complicate the investigation into the murder. Coffin refuses to believe that the remains could be Stella's. In addition, Coffin does not welcome the uncomfortable questions posed by Chief Superintendent Archie Young about the tempestuous Stella's personal life. And all the while the secretive Inspector Lodge of the Terrorist Squad harbors suspicions of his own.
Author
Gwendoline Williams Butler (aka Jennie Melville) Gwendoline Williams was born on 19th August 1922 in South London, England, UK, daughter of Alice (Lee) and Alfred Edward Williams, her younger twin brothers are also authors. Educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she read History, and later lectured there. On 16th October 1949, she married Dr Lionel Harry Butler (1923-1981), 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, she started to published John Coffin novels under her married name, Gwendoline Butler. In 1962, she decided used her grandmother's name, Jennie Melville as pseudonym to sing her Charmian Daniels novels. She was credited for inventing the "woman's police procedural". 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.
