Gwendoline Butler
Personal Information
Description
Gwendoline Williams was born on 19 August 1922 in Blackheath, 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.
Books
Dread Murder
When Major Mearns, a guard at Windsor Castle, receives a package containing a pair of human legs, he and his friend Seargeant Denny are determined to solve the crime, while Mearns also vies for the affections of a maid.
A Coffin for the Canary
Inspector John Coffin has a yellow canary - not a bird, but a woman, as the police refer to women who sing with a touch of hysteria. Olivia struggles through a nightmare where fact and fantasy merge as she tries to find who murdered her lover.
A grave coffin
The discovery of the mutilated body of a detective who was doing undercover work on the sale of illegal pharmaceuticals is only the first element in a bizarre investigation facing Commander John Coffin. Soon, other bodies begin to appear.
Let There Be Love
Three women: Dodo, Val, and Charley, orphaned at birth, are bound by a unique friendship spanning two continents, and two world wars. Dodo, ""born to Bohemia"", always lived by her own rules until an unknown enemy turns her world upside down; Val, beautiful, wanton and the toast of Paris, cannot forget the uncertain circumstances of her birth; and Charley, the outsider, who finds fulfilment the hard way as she struggles to become an artist. From Toronto to Paris, austerity to international fame, the friendship they share endures through love affairs, marriages, tragedy and divorce, to their ultimate triumph as women of property and status. A story of loyalty, courage and enterprise and of three unforgettable women, in an era which changed forever what it meant to be a woman...