Flaxborough Flair

Colin Watson is one of those writers - Jane Austen is another, and so is Agatha Christie - that you could read even if their sense of humour didn't resonate with your own, but you'd lose a good deal of the joy of the books. 

You could also read just one of his stories - and for a long time that was all I had done (as ever, shout out to Kensington Central Library, for Coffin Scarcely Used, in a paperback dating probably from the time before the last that Watson was published).

Then I found three more, in a second hand bookshop in Paignton when I was on holiday last year, recovering from Covid and short of reading material, and discovered that reading in order, one after the other, allowed me to get a real feel for the recurring characters - the police and journalists and population of the fictional town of Flaxborough, and the character of the town itself and how it changes - just a bit at first, in those books. 

By later books - which I read mostly as ebooks on my phone - we are in the world of TV ads and washing powder promotions, although Flaxborough, in its phlegmatic way, carries on carrying on without too much reference to these outside world distractions. 

There is, however, all sorts of naughtiness going on behind respectable front doors within the town itself, and it's the imperturbability of Inspector Purbright and baby-faced Sergeant Love, and in later books, the slightly Machiavellian Miss Lucilla Edith Cavell Teatime (arriving in Flaxborough from London and deciding she has found her spiritual home) that had me downloading and reading book after book. 

That said I am a good way through The Naked Nuns and getting a little impatient for an actual crime. I like to think I'm not a bloodthirsty reader, but at some stage surely someone gets done in? There's any number of candidates. 

Colin Watson has been described as bawdy, and although often it's the way he tells it that's really funny, or his observations of snobbery and oneupmanship, there is definite bawdiness here. Very occasionally the gender politics even tip over into 'should this be a subject for humour' - although in his defence Watson hasn't (in the eight books I've read so far) ever made the mistake of suggesting women should just expect this kind of thing, and it's their own fault if they don't. That may sound a low bar, but I've been surprised how many writers of both sexes and many different eras don't manage it. 

It's also quite difficult to suggest naughty old men or dirty minded old ladies should not be a subject for humour if you go into a book thinking murder is. Still if you're the sort of person who wants a good clean puzzle, or finds that kind of humour a distraction, this probably isn't for you. For anyone else I'd say give it a go, Watson is drily funny as well, and his recurring characters likeable and consistent.  

In contrast to his writing style, as a person Colin Watson seems to have been quiet and unremarkable. According to The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books by Martin Edwards, Watson coined the term Mayhem Parva for the kind of villages that mysteries happen in, and successfully sued Private Eye for their description of one of his books. In The Golden Age of Murder, also by Martin Edwards, the fact Watson invented that Mayhem Parva term is mentioned again in passing in reference to Agatha Christie. If there's any other mention of Watson in the book I don't remember it and it's not in the index. 

Online sources state he was educated in Croydon and provide a brief history of his working life as a journalist. His Wikipedia photo is of a slim rather gentle looking man in glasses that look too big for his face. And that folks, is all I can tell you. 

Except that Snobbery With Violence, Watson's book about books (mostly about crime fiction but also taking in subscription libraries, elitism, and various other concepts) seems to be out of print but was easy enough to get hold of. I read it in hardback. Slightly disappointed because it doesn't have the wit and flair of his fiction (although there are still some nice turns of phrase), I don't think I really did it justice. It's a perfectly good potted history of the genre, but as I've read others, and more up to date ones, it's not a book I'll hold on to. 

Instead I'll be finishing the Flaxborough Chronicles, and perhaps trying to find out more about Colin Watson outside his writing. If I do find anything I'll report back.