The Coffin Trail by Martin Edwards

I have discovered another great series to add to my list. I finished reading THE COFFIN TRAIL by Martin Edwards a couple of days ago and really, really enjoyed it. I picked up three of Martin Edwards' books, all in the Daniel Kind/Hannah Scarlett series, when I was in Scottsdale at the Poisoned Pen. I had read a review of this book by Nan at Letters from a Hill Farm and also had read a review of a later book in the series, THE ARSENIC LABYRINTH, by Margaret at BooksPlease. Both ladies wrote good reviews that made me want to try the series.

Daniel Kind is an Oxford historian and also hosts a TV show. His girlfriend, Miranda, is a writer and they have decided they need a change. Totally on impulse, they purchase a cottage in a very small village in the Lake District that Daniel visited as a boy. They want to "get away from it all". The cottage is near a coffin trail, a track used to carry the dead over the mountains from one remote location to another. Their cottage was once the home of a man who the local residents consider a murderer, even though he died before he could be charged with the crime. A woman had been found laid out on the Sacrifice Stone and Daniel's father, Ben Kind, was the police officer who investigated the death many years ago. Hannah Scarlett, now a Detective Chief Inspector but once Ben Kind's sergeant, is heading up a new squad that will look into cold cases. Hannah and her team start asking questions about this unsolved case. Coincidentally, Daniel is asking some of the same questions, for the man who locals assumed was the murderer was a childhood friend and Daniel cannot believe that he could have caused any living creature harm, much less have brutally murdered a young woman. People in this small village are not pleased to have such an unpleasant affair dredged up again.

I found the mystery intriguing and the area depicted quite interesting. I'm also very partial to cold case mysteries. I look forward to reading the next book in the series, THE CIPHER GARDEN. As usual, Poisoned Pen publishes a mystery that I love.