Cheap Just what the doctor ordered (50 classics of crime fiction, 1950-1975) (Book) (Colin Watson) Price

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This slim novel (originally entitled The Flaxborough Crab) is yet another in Colin Watson's excellently twisted series of mysteries centering around a rural British town that makes the place where Murder, She Wrote was set look like a walk in the park. This time, the redoubtable Inspector Purbright and his sidekick Sidney are stuck with an older chap who seems to lurk about attempting to sexually assault women, always failing miserably and the scuttling off sideways when attempting to escape. I'll bet you never thought you'd come across a book that reminds you of a cross between a serial killer novel and the film Better Off Dead. Well, you've got it. Funny thing is, it was written fifteen years before either the film or the rise of the serial killer novel. Go figure.

As usual, Watson laces his story with a heavy dose of the arsenic of social commentary on the supposed pastorality of rural British life. This is funny stuff, but always with a bite to it; the sense of humor comes off as almost bitter in places. Fans of Dorothy Parker will be more amused by this than will fans of Martin and Lewis.

Also as usual, Watson does one of the things that drives me nuts in detective novels: there has to be someone sitting around at the end explaining some of the piece that never got tied up. (Jessica Fletcher, phone home.) However, the sitting-around-explaining bit at the end shouldn't necessarily put you off Watson, because what comes before it is top-notch stuff, even if it is recognizably genre writing. No one will ever mistake Colin Watson for Dashiell Hammett, but the man's turned out some witty, wonderful novels nonetheless. ...