This is the fourth in Malton’s series of cosy mysteries featuring an Ontario puppet-maker eking out a precarious lifestyle in the cottage-country bush somewhere north of Toronto. The approaching winter season finds Polly Deacon three months pregnant and without sufficient firewood for a comfortable confinement. The gloom lifts somewhat when she receives an invitation to participate in a puppetry conference and festival in Canterbury, England. The invitation promises a free pre-partum vacation before real life envelops her.

After leaving her relationship with the father-to-be in its usual state of uncertainty, her trip gets off to a bad start when someone tries to steal her luggage at the Toronto airport, and again several more times when she arrives in England. She is also beset by a series of amazing coincidences. A woman who could be her identical twin is murdered during an abortion rally; casual acquaintances on trains know people she knows; she spots one of the thieves from the top of a crowded bus; and she re-meets the person with whom she shared the flight over.

One Large Coffin to Go is just too busy and often loses its way. In an attempt to please everyone Malton has combined elements of mystery, romance, travel-writing, comedy, puppetry trivia, behaviour tips for foreigners, and motherhood tips. This is yet another Canadian crime book featuring a feisty, marching-to-a-different-drummer, middle-class heroine who manages to be carelessly brave or utterly hapless. The novel will blend in memory with dozens of other recent similar works. I regret that this new soft-centred version of the female sleuth has largely displaced their tougher, better-crafted predecessors.