The Coffin Tree

Gwendoline Butler, née Williams was born on August 19, 1922 in South London, England. She was a British writer of mystery fiction and romance novels since 1956. She also used the pseudonym Jennie Melville. Credited for inventing the "woman's police procedural", is well known for her series of Inspector John Coffin novels as Gwendoline Butler, and by female detective Charmian Daniels as Jennie Melville. She was educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she read History, and later lectured there. In 1956, she started to publish John Coffin novels under her married name, Gwendoline Butler. In 1962, she decided to use her grandmother's name, Jennie Melville as pseudonym to sign her Charmian Daniels novels. 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.

Her titles include Receipt for Murder, Coffin Following, Coffin's Ghost, Coffin Knows the Answer and Loving Murder.

She died on January 5, 2013.

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