less than 1 minute read

Colin Watson Biography

(1920–82), Coffin, Scarcely Used, The Flaxborough Crab, Just What the Doctor Ordered



British crime writer and journalist, born in Croydon; he wrote a number of richly comic satires of contemporary English life in the form of detective stories set in the imaginary East Anglian town of Flaxborough, beginning with Coffin, Scarcely Used (1958). The best is possibly The Flaxborough Crab (1969; US title Just What the Doctor Ordered), but Bump in the Night (1960), Lonelyheart 4122 (1967), and Broomsticks over Flaxborough (1972; US title Kissing Covens) are also excellent. Watson is also the author of Snobbery with Violence (1971; revised 1979), a study of twentieth-century crime fiction.



Additional topics

Literature Reference: American Literature, English Literature, Classics & Modern FictionEncyclopedia of Literature: Robert Penn Warren Biography to Kenneth White Biography