Coffin's Game [Paperback]

Stella Pinero goes on a short R&R to calm her inner demons, the ones that seem to wake her in the middle of a performance and ask, "What are you doing and why are you doing it?" She leaves shortly after two explosions (presumably placed by terrorists) occur in one day in the Second City. Stella disappears for several days, but her purse turns up at the scene of a murder, along with her clothing on the body of the deceased. There is also a disturbing photograph of Stella chewing on a human arm. Even the Chief Commander admits:

"It's like a Victorian melodrama ... The heroine's handkerchief turns up to incriminate her."

Of course, when Stella shows up, she acts as if nothing has happened. Oh, those actresses and their pesky secrets!

The investigation continues, along with much agonizing on everyone's part for having to suspect the Chief Commander's wife. Archie Young tries to get along with Inspector Lodge, a specialist in terrorism brought in to help out with the bombings. Phoebe Astley is as competent as ever, but her boss is worried about who she's sleeping with. But these have little to do with the overall plot and don't really do much to advance the story.

Coffin's "game" turns out to be little more than an investigation technique of walking the witness through familiar places. He turns it into a game of trust between him and his wife, trying to determine whether she will trust him with the truth, and it plays out rather like the melodrama Coffin alludes to earlier as he uncovers once of Stella's secrets from the past.

Butler's focus on her main character is overwhelmingly ponderous throughout the book. Coffin never seems to grow out of his staid isolationism. The seconary characters -- even the criminals -- are more interesting. While it's admirable that the author focuses on people to tell the story rather than the plot alone, it's obvious she didn't give enough attention to the plot in this police procedural. Her die-hard fans will find only a small growth in the relationship between John Coffin and Stella Pinero, but little else of interest.

So, what we have are two enigmatic main characters and a fluff of a dog, several murders, and the usual display of Gwendoline Butler's flakes and perverts. The plot is filled with twists and turns, some of which lead to undisclosed past events and some of which are a result of the characters' own dark secrets.

Do we have a good book? Not exactly. Things do get logically put together in the end, and the motives are sex, money, and revenge. But somehow, there's an integration lacking here--too much of the plot and the characterization seems to be decorations which are not integrated with function. Like lace doilies on the arm of a flowered chintz sofa, there's too much "stuff" to be anything but a distraction.