There could be an argument made to the effect that I've currently got too many series revisits going on - what with this, the Flaxborough Chronicles, my rerun right through the Discworld novels, a restart of the Smiley series by Le Carre, and whatever else I've started and forgotten about...Read more
“I am in great danger … I know that murder is going to be the reward for my uncomplaining loyalty.”
This letter containing heartfelt and urgent pleas for help is received by three very eminent citizens of Flaxborough, including the Chief Constable...Read more
LONELYHEART 4122 sees the introduction of Miss Lucilla (Lucy) Teatime to the mayhem that is Flaxborough and the series is all the better for her presence.
Originally published in the late 1960's, this is a time of matrimonial agencies (and is now a good time to admit I was...Read more
Whatever can have happened to Lil?
Flaxborough butcher Arthur Spain is worried that his sister-in-law hasn’t been in touch lately, so he pays her a visit. But Lil’s not at home, and by her porch door are a dozen bottles of curdling milk… Alarmed, he calls in...Read more
The third novel in the Flaxborough series, I've always thought that it was here that Colin Watson declared his hand and intentions most firmly. Everything about this novel is slightly wacky, very English in humour and stylings, and slyly clever.
As you will get from the opening...Read more
The gripping sight of four burly policeman manhandling a bath down the front path of a respectable villa isn’t one the residents of Flaxborough see every day.
Net curtains twitch furiously, and neighbours have observations to make to Chief Inspector Purbright ...Read more
The second book in one of my all time favourite series, the Flaxborough Chronicles, BUMP IN THE NIGHT, sees DI Purbright on temporary secondment to Chalmsbury after a series of monuments explode. Things get a lot more serious though when local "identity" Stan Biggadyke is blown up on the...Read more
Tuesday nights have suddenly turned quite ridiculously noisy in the country town of Chalmsbury, where the good folk are outraged at having their rest disturbed.
It begins with a drinking fountain being blown to smithereens – next the statue of a local worthy loses his head, and...Read more
Anybody new to the Flaxborough Chronicles by British writer Colin Watson might not be aware of the author's body of work. Born in 1920, dying in 1983, Watson wrote twelve Flaxborough novels in total, renowned for their dry comic styling, set in the small fictional town of Flaxborough,...Read more
In the respectable seaside town of Flaxborough, the equally respectable councillor Harold Carobleat is laid to rest. Cause of death: pneumonia.
But he is scarcely cold in his coffin before Detective Inspector Purbright, affable and annoyingly...Read more