Genre: Mystery
Hardcover; Paperback: Digital Book
ISBN # 9780413443502; 9780571252879
[Faber & Faber]; Farrago Publishing
192 Pages
[Various Prices]; $3.99 Amazon
[1968] April 19, 2018
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"I am in great danger...I know that murder is going to be the reward for my uncomplaining loyalty."
This letter containing heartfelt urgent pleas for help is received by three very eminent citizens of Flaxborough, including the Chief Constable himself. So when one of the town's most tireless charity workers, Mrs. Henrietta Palgrove, is found the wrong way up in her garden pond, a connection seems likely.
Yet Detective Inspector Purbright finds the case does not quite add up and it takes the acute wits of his old friend, the ever-charming Miss Lucilla Teatime, as well as the more unwitting help of Mortimer Hive, indifferent private investigator and accomplished ladies' man, to tease out the real murderer.
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When Detective Inspector Purbright visits his superior, Chubb, the man is in possession of a a letter that seems, for all intents and purposes, to foretell of a murder not yet committed. But it was addressed only “My Dear Friend” and unsigned. While it purported to have a picture of the would-be victim, there is no picture attached. Stranger yet, it seems that Coroner Amblesby and the editor of the local newspaper have also received copies of the same letter. While at first it appears to be only a crank, when a prominent woman is murdered - in one of the ways mentioned in the letter - it is up to Purbright and his sergeant, Sid Love, to find out who wanted the woman dead.
At the same time, a private detective named Mortimer Hive is on the trail of a pair of illicit lovers, but is having a problem - his camera has been stolen and his car has been disabled - yet the intrepid detective isn’t going to let either stop him, and proceeds on foot to the little love cottage where he finds one lover but not the other.
What these two incidents have in common seem nothing at all; yet eventually it becomes clear to Purbright that they are indeed connected, and with the help of Mr. Hive and the redoubtable Lucy Teatime, Purbright may very well find a murderer who has been hiding in plain sight all along...
This is the fifth book in the Flaxborough Chronicles and is a very good entry in the series. Purbright is once again in top form, along with Love, whose reasoning process, while slower than his D.I.’s, is still right on the money. He goes about solving the murder methodically, finding the clues and placing them exactly where they’re supposed to be.
This is what makes a good mystery, and Colin Watson has a knack not only for doing so, but leaving us with endings, while not entirely complete, still leave us the answers we have been looking for. As it is, I have enjoyed every book in the series thus far, and am looking forward to reading the next. Highly recommended.
This is what makes a good mystery, and Colin Watson has a knack not only for doing so, but leaving us with endings, while not entirely complete, still leave us the answers we have been looking for. As it is, I have enjoyed every book in the series thus far, and am looking forward to reading the next. Highly recommended.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07B9RK4S6/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2396488473
More on Colin Watson's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/w/colin-watson/
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