Gripping and suspenseful! A very well-written book with wonderfully-interesting characters. The tension builds at just the right pace as the story unfolds. Will keep you swiping the pages furiously. Worthy of your TBR list.

*I received a complimentary ARC of this book from in order to read and provide a voluntary and honest review, should I choose to do so.

An interesting book set in the mid 1960's in Bristol and Harlem and then heading to Barbados.

The story involves a lot of crime, drugs, corruption, voodoo, and slavery, so something for everyone but, unfortunately, not for me.

Such a good book. I'm sorry I let this sit on the shelf for so long. It's part of a series but stands alone. I'm definitely going to buy the others. Need these on my shelf. If you like a well written crime thriller, this is your book. Loved, loved, loved.

Very descriptive and very absorbing. You can find yourself immersed in this book quite easily. A really good series that promises many more interesting additions.

I started this but just wasn't feeling it. There was nothing inherently wrong with it I just wasn't feeling it at the time, however having been really excited about this book beforehand I would like to try again sometime.

I’m late to this particular book, but only because for some odd reason Netgalley had listed the publication date as 1st November 2018. Whatever, I am very glad indeed that I have got to it, because it is a punchy, transfixing, action packed read.

Note that this is the third in a trilogy of books about this character and whilst it reads perfectly well as a stand -alone, I enjoyed it so much that it left me wishing I had read the series from the beginning (something I will now do).

The novel begins some years earlier than the setting of 1967 with our protagonist JT and his sister Bernice. Off for a day’s fishing in St Philips, Barbados they are young and carefree, larking around until they come across the body of a dead police man.

Fast forward and JT is living in a narrowboat in Bristol Harbour in 1967, eking out a living as a private enquiry agent having being forced to leave his Barbados home after being set up in his previous job as a policeman. His wife and child were killed in a fierce home fire and J.T. has escaped the island to mourn his loss.

But his troubles start again when his postman and drinking buddy brings him a telegram with the worst possible news. His sister Bernice has died and his cousin Vic, never knowingly on the right side of the law, has arranged for him to travel home to Barbados to wind up her estate, via New York and New Orleans.

Permeating his journey, from Bristol to London and on through NYC to New Orleans and Klan country, is the shocking scale and range of the racism encounters. It is all too easy to forget that this was only 50 years ago and the treatment that the Windrush generation received, making the reader only too aware of the reasons why many immigrants felt and still sometimes feel, like second class citizens in their own country.

Racism isn’t the only ever present enemy though. As JT reminisces about life with his mother, Cora and Clifford, his cruel drunk of a father the reader learns more about JT’s upbringing and how his family came to be involved with the Monroe family. A white family on Barbados whom JT despises because a Monroe was responsible for the deaths of his wife and child.

Evangeline Laveau telephones JT on his cousin Vic’s behalf and makes all the arrangements for his travel, even accompanying him from NYC to New Orleans.

In New York, Evangeline and her minders take JT straight to Harlem where he encounters a witch doctor named Obeah and receives a strange gift in the form of a miniature coffin. Its really not clear what is going on at this point but rest assured the story gets clearer.

Evangeline herself is young, beautiful and strong – and a committed member of the black struggle movement, The Black Panthers. M.P.Wright shows us the unvarnished violence and raw racism of the deep South which helps us in understanding how the Black Panther movement came into existence, and why their view encompassed armed struggle. He also shows us just how they achieved their arms and what role JT’s cousin Vic had in their affairs.

After a great deal of violence, bloodshed and death JT and Vic finally come together to travel back to Barbados. There JT learns the whole truly shocking story of Bernice’s death and Vic and Monroe’s activities. This is the denouement that Wright has been building up to and you can feel JT’s heart hardening and his rage growing as he understands the enormity of the crimes he is told about.

He has been lured into Vic’s sorry life of drugs, violence and death and now he must decide whether he can overcome his innate law abiding nature and kill for revenge. This is material for the strong of stomach and some of the violence is very gory, but the research feels solid and although I wasn’t at all sure that the use of patois was going to work for me, in the end it was fine because it all made sense in the action of the book.

JT is an interesting and emotionally reserved character, who takes a long time to get to breaking point. I was less enamoured of Vic, who I think has trouble with a capital T written all over him.

Restless Coffins is a novel redolent with sights, sounds and smells, enabling the reader to experience the locations. I could almost smell that gumbo. The book is full of tension and action heavy, yet packed with observation, is not without humour and is a great way to understand some of social conditions in 1960’s Britain and America.

JT Ellington himself is a subtle and nuanced character with a deep emotional reserve and a heart breaking backstory – and that’s what makes you care so much about him.

Verdict: A fascinating protagonist with a deep backstory who shines a light on 1960’s America in a punchy, action packed story. A terrific read.

Intrigue, death not accepted, mystery, family bonds, and finally an answer as to why! From Barbados to England to the United States and back. Fate of one interestingly is resolution for others.

It's the third book in series that I haven't read but didn't have a hard time following the story. It's an entertaining read and is definitely worth reading. I'll definitely be looking to read the rest of the series.

Thanks to Netgalley for an advance review copy of this book.

Restless Coffins by M.P. Wright, grabbed my attention firstly with the title and the cover art. Reading the synopsis I thought, wow, what a great concept, a Barbadian (that's a person from Barbados, I think) moves away from his island home and becomes a private investigator in the UK, but is dragged back into his past life after a family tragedy.

Sounds awesome, but this book did leave me slightly flat. It had nothing to do with the fact that this is book 3 of a trilogy, which I didn't realise initially, having not read the first two books. The author did an awesome job covering pertinent events from the past, allowing this to be read as a stand-alone book. It's a little hard for me to really pinpoint what the issue was, but the book just couldn't hold 100% of my attention. I can say that I actually found the author's sometimes overly descriptive style a little annoying. That may have had something to do with it.

Having said that, I did enjoy the story. Joseph Ellington, the main protagonist, is a complicated character who has gone through some deep tragedy, with the loss of his wife and daughter in an act of revenge against him. He just wants to live his life in London, plodding through as a PI, but is dragged back into his dark history when his sister dies. He then has to deal with his criminal cousin, who sponsors his trip back to Barbados. Joseph is exposed to more of his cousin's criminal activities than he'd ever known, manipulated and coerced into doing things his conscience would never normally allow.

This is a good mystery story, which I would have rated 4 stars, but am dropping to 3.5 stars simply because it just didnt manage to hook me as much as I'd hoped. (Unfortunately i have to choose 3 stars)

Great story by a new author to me, great plot and thrilling twists and turns. Highly recommend to others.

The title of Wright's third book in the Detective J.T. Ellington series, caught my eye as I was browsing NetGalley one day, so after debating if I should read the third book in a series I had never read, I downloaded it and the rest is history.

Set in the tumultuous 1960s among the Vietnam War, ghetto rioting, and the rise of a militant antiwar movement, Joseph Ellington is swept from Bristol to Harlem, to New Orleans, and finally to Barbados inside of just a few days. The telegram he receives from his cousin Vic (a man with questionable business practices) is short and to the point "Joseph Stop I sincerely regret to inform you of the death of your sister Bernice May Ellington Stop Request you make arrangements to return to Barbados to settle affairs Stop." Joseph's journey to Barbados is laden with violence, death and family secrets that will change his life forever.

Told in Joseph's point of review, we delve into Joseph's pain and anger of losing yet another loved one, as well as the fear that he might not make it back to his quiet life in Bristol. Joseph interacts with many well-developed, colorful characters (good and bad) during a year of much unrest, giving the story depth and credibility convincing me that book 3 can be read on its own. A fast-paced, quality suspense thriller with plenty of surprises that does contain violence and strong language. Mr. Wright notes that book 4, Rivers of Blood, is in the works. Get the whole series at Amazon.

Thank you to Mr. Wright, Black and White Publishing and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Wow-I really enjoyed this author's writing style, he drew me in from the start and didn’t let me go until the last page. I was captivated by the story and eager to read on. I just couldn't put it down. A gripping dark, enthralling read a dark and edgy read, The book has the perfect mix of twists and turns that keeps the reader on their toes for the whole book. Definitely, a must-read. Recommended.

Once I started reading I couldn’t put this down. Gory in places but definitely recommended to fans of this genre.

This is the final part of MP Wright’s trilogy which began with Heartman in 2014. That, and the middle novel All Through The Night (2016), tell the story of Joseph Tremaine “JT” Ellington, an ex-cop with a tragic past. JT has been forced to leave his native Barbados as a result of his upsetting certain powerful people on the island; his personal fate, however, is nothing compared to that of his wife and daughter who have perished in a fire that was anything but accidental.
Ellington, broke and broken-hearted has ended up in 1960s Bristol, where he uses his police training to eke out a living as a private investigator. When he receives the news that his only sister, Bernice, has died in Barbados, he is compelled to return home to wind up her affairs. Hovering in the background, however, is Ellington’s violent criminal cousin Victor, who has reappeared after rumours of his tumbling to his death on the rocky slopes of Bristol’s Clifton Gorge prove to be greatly exaggerated. When Ellington arrives in New York after the first leg of his journey home, he rapidly realises that ‘born-again’ Vic is involved in something much more dangerous – and potentially lethal – than his previous mildly illegal entrepreneurship within the West Indian community in Bristol.
Hooked into a deadly game of guns, drugs, deceit, deaths – and then more deaths – Ellington eventually arrives in Barbados, but only after a sojourn in New Orleans, where the city’s reputation for exotic violence is further enhanced. By now, three coffins have joined the travelling party. Much too honest and trusting for this venture, it eventually dawns on Ellington that these coffins are part of not only a drug deal, but also the means by which the violently despotic Barbados criminal named Monroe – almost certainly the killer of Ellington’s wife and daughter – will be despatched to join his ancestors.
Restless Coffins is strong stuff. There is no shortage of corpses, and endless variety in the ways they are killed. The villains are evil personified and the good guys – with the exception of Ellington himself – are few and far between. Mark Wright certainly takes a position regarding the way black people in the 1960s were treated by the indigenous British population. Although very little of the action in Restless Coffins takes place in England, readers of the previous two books will know that the attitude of white people towards those we now call The Windrush Generation is almost entirely negative. And, reading today’s newspaper, it seems that those problems are far from over.
Wright has made the decision to phonetically transcribe all the dialogue between the main characters in his books. I have to admit that in Heartman it was a source of irritation to me, but such is the pace and vigour of the action in Restless Coffins that it didn’t seem to matter as much this time around. The new ‘crime’ of Cultural Appropriation seems to me to be one of the most pointless, misguided and irrelevant of fashionable 21st century dogmas, so you will hear no complaint from me about a white Englishman writing a novel with an almost entirely black cast, complete with speech patterns, vocabulary and inflections.
The bottom line is that this is a crackerjack novel, full of action, humour, social observation, historical accuracy, brilliant topographical descriptions and the absolute sine qua non of a good book – a central character who is credible and described with subtlety and nuance. If you read this, and don’t care about JT Ellington and what happens to him, then you have a heart of stone and the emotional sensibility of a fruit fly.
Restless Coffins is published by Black and White Publishing and is out now.

Restless Coffins (2018) by M. P. Wright is the third in his series about policeman turned private-eye J.T. Ellington. This work follows Heartman (2014) and All Through the Night (2016). Fans will be glad to hear that there is to be a fourth in the series.
I can see why previous books in the series have been so popular. Characters are well developed and credible as they make their way through a series of unpredictable, challenging situations. The text flows well, and is easy to read, yet is so incredibly rich in descriptive detail, it is as if the author watched it unfold as a video and had the luxury of stopping each scene to capture every element to allow readers to paint a picture in their own minds of each unfolding situation. This visual imagery is supported by Ellington’s narration in formal English and dialogue between the characters in Bajan (a spoken Barbados English-based creole language with African influences) or African-English vernacular.
The plot features extreme violence, racism, corruption and revenge, the latter arising from a multi-generational feud between two families. It takes readers to the 1960s Black Panther era, from Bristol UK to Harlem and New Orleans in the USA and then Barbados. Knowing nothing about the time, settings and cultures did not diminish my enjoyment of the book, but presented a drawback for writing an informed review. I don’t know if the events described are typical of what happened at the time. I would like to understand how the author completed the research required for the book, and why this author decided to tell this story.
Though the ending seems to suggest the possibility of better days and happier times, I am not convinced it will, so look forward to Ellington’s return in River of Blood (2019).
Disclosure: I received a review copy of Restless Coffins for free via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

At the time that I requested this, I did not realize it was the third book in a Trilogy. I really wish that NetGalley publishers would be upfront when a book they have posted exists in a series; this is the third or fourth time this has happened to me in the past couple of weeks, and I don't understand why... You would think a publisher would want you to know exactly what you were getting before you requested it, to avoid unfinished titles or confused reviews. I find it very frustrating to request books and get excited about them, only to find out that they fall within the middle of a series. I generally do not request a series book out of order, or if I have missed its preceding titles. It is really hard to pick up a book in the middle of a series, particularly if it is a well-written series. You find yourself behind the eight ball, often without knowing why...

I am still intrigued by this title, but have to start at the beginning of the series - otherwise I don't see how I can evaluate this title fairly.

A Barbados-born detective in the haunting violent atmosphere

JT Ellington was an ex-cop living in Bristol. He received the bad news from his native country, Barbados. He and his sister discovered a corpse at the shore in the ‘30s when they were little.

JT needed to go home to pay his respects to one of his relatives. However, he had to meet his cousin, Vic the crime lord in New York. Once in Harlem, JT met Evangeline and Pigfoot the Bajan. They travelled together to New Orleans.

The attitudes towards the non-white people still never change in the UK and the US and this makes me still sad. There is still violence, corruption and voodoo in the communities in Harlem, New Orleans and the Caribbean islands.

I laud MP Wright because of the way the characters speak in African-American or Afro-Caribbean accents, as if I am listening to their conversations. I strongly recommend this book.

Columpoirot

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review

Barbados to Bristol, and back via Harlem the Deep South of America. But this is no travel book as it a superb revenge crime story featuring a ‘retired’ Bajan detective J T Ellington. luckily, I was able to identify the 1967 era when the story is set, and then was very familiar with the St Paul’s, Bristol area. At the insistence of cousin Vic, JT found himself in New York on the trail of his sister’s killer. I do not want to ruin the story, only to say that I love the writer’s style, his descriptions of places, characters (lots of different emotions), and journeys are a joy. He even made a long train journey evocative mixed with violence. The book has a great ending, and I did not realise it was the last in the trilogy until I had finished it. Yes, there are a few dead bodies, but this did not deter me from giving the book 5 stars.

absolutely terrific value: this is an engrossing novel all on its own, a crime story, a historical novel with utterly convincing characters. giving us insights of the relentless weight of racism. family ties run deep and take Joseph Ellington who I am sad to leave behind, to NY and New Orleans , from UK and then to his native Barbados to solve mystery of his unfortunately-connected family, back to his father - Joseph keeps tabs - with difficulty - on those ethics worked out before the time things went tragically sour - losing close familty to a corruption he was chasing down as a cop - he got falsely accused, and life has been following up from that. there are salient dollops of voodoo spooking us all - and spooking him even when he wants to dismiss it. I liked the fullsome descriptions of the life he leads now, and everyday blips in the road that waylay his honest intentions. it's not a fast, gimmicky read but about real folk , and real emotion - a slow read in some ways - very admirable and I hope Ellington goes on to other stories ... ..