A coffin trail was a path taken by mourners. In the Lake District, not every community had a church, so the mourners followed a pack-horse that carried the dead body to a nearby church. The trail near Brackdale leads to the Sacrifice Stone, an rock with ancient tales told about its dark history – and the location where, seven years ago, Barrie Gilpin left the mutilated body of a young female tourist, before falling to his death as he fled the scene. Or so the story goes…

Historian Daniel Kind has moved back to the village, buying the cottage where Barrie lived. He knew Barrie, and, like his late father who investigated the crime, never believed that Barrie was a killer. But as Daniel starts to ask questions, the cold case unit run by his father’s former partner DCI Hannah Scarlett gets a tip that prompts an official investigation. But this investigation is just the beginning…

I’ve long planned on revisiting this book, as I read it pre-blog and then have reviewed the other seven books in the series. So when my bi-hourly tweet from Joffe Books about their latest compilation of crime-novels-for-a-pittance advertised the complete set on ebook for £1.99, this was the prompt I needed.

Most readers of the blog will be aware of Martin’s work. If not, then it’s probably time to get acquainted. He is, I think it’s fair to say, one of the prime movers in the modern day revival of interest in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. On top of his non-fiction writing on the genre, and his influence and guiding hand on the British Library Crime Classics range, and editing a near-uncountable number of short story collections, he is also the author of many short stories, three standalone novels and three series – the (in my opinion) criminally overlooked Harry Devlin series, his current Rachel Savernake series and this one, focussing on cold cases in the Lake District with Daniel Kind and DCI Hannah Scarlett.

It’s an interesting series not least in the fact that the leads don’t always get equal page time. Sometimes, when it wouldn’t make sense to push Daniel into the forefront of the plot, Martin simply doesn’t – The Crooked Shore, for example, is primarily a Hannah Scarlett book – while The Dungeon House has Hannah in it, but it predominantly focusses on a character who the plot hinges around. But running through everything is the development of the both of the characters’ lives – it’s clear in this one that there’s an attraction between them, but given that both of them are in relationships, plus the previous close friendship between Hannah and Daniel’s father, it’s quite a bumpy road. But it’s most definitely a road worth travelling.

This one is a very interesting beast. It has to deal with introducing the characters, their relationships and the setting while still incorporating a murder mystery. It does feel a little like the mystery takes a bit of a back seat for the first half or so of the book – it does take a while before Daniel and Hannah are working on the same page and even then, it more like they occasionally compare notes before heading off in different directions again. Daniel is the prime mover in this one, I’d say, as he is effectively the newcomer in this tale. The plot develops quite slowly, so, given what an impatient so and so I am, it’s a credit to Martin’s writing that I was constantly absorbed by the goings-on. Credit also to Martin for taking his time before an incident in the modern day happens – I wonder, are there any cold-case mysteries where the investigation doesn’t stir up a modern day murder. Apart from The Daughter Of Time, obviously. Or The Wench Is Dead…

Sorry, got distracted. Readers of Martin’s more recent books might be surprised that this doesn’t contain a surfeit of clues – the main one does require a bit of additional knowledge, I think – but it’s a very satisfying tale with an ending that makes perfect sense of everything that has gone before.

All in all, this is a very satisfying read and a great start to a series. And given each of the books costs a grand total of 24.875 pence as an ebook, why not give it a go? Might not shell out £320 for the hardback though…

The Lake District Mysteries

• The Coffin Trail (2004)
• The Cipher Garden (2006)
• The Arsenic Labyrinth (2007)
• The Serpent Pool (2010)
• The Hanging Wood (2011)
• The Frozen Shroud (2013)
• The Dungeon House (2015)
• The Crooked Shore (2021) aka The Girl They All Forgot