Sat 9 Jan 2021
Reviewed by Bob Adey: COLIN WATSON – Broomsticks over Flaxborough.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[7] Comments
COLIN WATSON – Broomsticks over Flaxborough. Inspector Walter Purbright #7. Eyre Methuen, UK, hardcover, 1972. Published in the US as Kissing Covens, Putnam, 1972. Berkley N2675, paperback, 1974.
Who else would give his police constables names such as Pook, Palethorp, Brevitt, call the high priestess of an amateur witches’ coven Mrs. Pentatuke, describe the ultimate degradation of ladies as “being trapped in their hostess’s lavatory with an unsinkable turd.”
Yes, we’re undoubtedly back in Flaxborough again, where that most urbane of policemen, Inspector Purbright, with his faithful henchman, Sergeant Love, investigates the strange disappearance of one of the handmaidens of this particular Satanic master.
Throw in a strange murder by stabbing (with the horn of a ritual fertility mask no less), crafty Miss Lucilla Teatime, currently treasurer of the Edith Cavell Psychical Research Foundation, a hilarious promotional campaign for Lucillite, a brand new detergent, and we have a typical Flaxborough milieu.
Grand stuff, neatly clued, beautifully observed, wittily written. Personally I can’t get enough of Colin Watson.
January 9th, 2021 at 4:24 pm
Here’s a list of all of Watson’s Flaxborough mysteries:
Coffin, Scarcely Used (1958)
Bump in the Night (1960)
Hopjoy Was Here (1962)
Lonelyheart 4122 (1967)
Charity Ends at Home (1968)
The Flaxborough Crab (1969) – U.S: Just What the Doctor Ordered
Broomsticks over Flaxborough (1972) – U.S: Kissing Covens
The Naked Nuns (1975) – U.S: Six Nuns and a Shotgun
One Man’s Meat (1977) – U.S: It Shouldn’t Happen to a Dog
Blue Murder (1979)
Plaster Sinners (1980)
Whatever’s Been Going on at Mumblesby? (1982)
Also of interest, perhaps, from Wikipedia:
“Four of the Flaxborough novels were adapted for television by the BBC under the series title Murder Most English. The four were Hopjoy Was Here, Lonelyheart 4122, The Flaxborough Crab and Coffin Scarcely Used. The adaptations successfully reflected key elements of the books: the gentle behind-the-times feel of a small English market town, the merciless targeting of the pretensions of some of the town’s social leaders, and the author’s notion that whatever exotic trappings are used to decorate the plot, the central crime is always motivated by money. Anton Rodgers starred as Purbright with Christopher Timothy as Detective Sergeant Love and Brenda Bruce as Miss Lucilla Teatime. Colin Watson produced the ninth Flaxborough novel, One Man’s Meat, to coincide with the series.”
January 9th, 2021 at 6:09 pm
Watson also wrote Snobbery with Violence, an influential and funny study of 1920s and 30s upper-class British thrillers and the attitudes and assumptions of their characters and authors.
January 9th, 2021 at 7:41 pm
Yes, indeed. A small classic in terms of solid criticism of the detective story — and as you say, immensely fun to read.
January 9th, 2021 at 8:21 pm
Nice article on Colin Watson here:
https://crimefictionlover.com/2015/09/cis-the-flaxborough-chronicles-by-colin-watson/
With author photos, which i always like
January 9th, 2021 at 9:21 pm
Nice catch on this one, Sai. Thanks! This is a site new to me, one that I’ve never visited before.
January 9th, 2021 at 11:00 pm
LONELY HEARTS 4122 was adapted as a made for television movie with Rosalind Russell and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. minus Purbright and Flaxborough.
Great series though I always read them some distance apart. VIOLENCE is one of the better social studies of the thriller as well as a fine introcuction to the thrillers of that era.
January 10th, 2021 at 6:17 am
Watson also sued the British satirical magazine Private Eye for calling him “the little-known author who . . . was writing a novel, very Wodehouse but without the jokes†– an unfair description – at least in the reference to the absence of jokes – which cost them £750, a handy sum then. It was the first successful libel case brought against PE. In fact, I can’t help but wonder if this was a sly piece of sponsorship and publicity for Watson.