COFFIN AND THE PAPER MAN

Scotland Yard's Chief Commander John Coffin is, at last, mostly at ease with the Docklands area he now commands (Coffin in the Museum of Crime, etc.), living in an apartment neighboring one owned by actress Stella Pinero, his longtime friend, sometime lover. The district, a mix of old poverty and new wealth, is shaken by the rape-murder of young Anna Mary Kinver, her body found by Jim Marsh, who walks the dogs of well-to-do families on Feather Street. Doctors Leonard and Felicity Zeman live there with son Tim, who's a prime suspect in the killing. Anna Mary's grief-crazed father Fred is sure of Tim's guilt and exults as the Zeman family is hit by repeated tragedies. Meanwhile, Coffin—besieged by ominous letters signed ``Paperman,'' malicious mischief and worse from local hoodlums, and proof that a poisoner is at work—slowly ties up a cascade of loose ends and solves a complex puzzle in this richly textured police procedural. One of the best in the Coffin series.