Coffin, Scarcely Used

Rating: 4.5* of five, rounded up because beguiling deliciousness deserves it

Beguiling. Delicious. Simple, slightly musty words piled in attractive and pleasing patterns. Observations worthy of a PET scanner. Purbright, our PoV person, is unquestionably the smartest man in the room. Especially among the constabulary, peopled with deeply ordinary and stoutly determined men (only one woman on that side of the fence, quite a minor character but a pleasure to meet indeed). The Chief Constable is a fatuous old party, someone one would expect to meet at Dunder Mifflin's board luncheon. Although...well...wait for the very, very end of the book. Heh.

The baddies are simply scintillating in their utter, stolid salt-of-the-earth dullness. You know show more these types, upstanding citizens with mortgages, wood-burning fireplaces, golf bats or cricket clubs or whatever those mildly athletic things are called. Their identities are not in the least mysterious, and Purbright quite clearly suspects them from page one. No one is in doubt about their guilt, only their motive and means. It's entirely enough fun for the reader to follow Purbright and his chief henchman Love around the respectable town of Flaxborough as they circle their nervous prey. Flaxborough...not quite as addictive as Three Pines, but very close.

Don't kid yourself, a slower pace and a lower body count do not a boring book make. If you like that rape/torture tattooed woman's tales, then yes, this isn't a good fit for your reading; but if you're okay with less vividly detailed violence supplanted by snark, innuendo, and a comically old-fashioned means of making illicit money, here's you a rainy Sunday book. show less

Coffin Scarcely Used by Colin Watson is a 2018 Farrago publication. (This book was originally published in 1958)

What a wonderful find!!

I am happy this rather obscure mystery series has been rediscovered and propelled into the digital age.

I was unfamiliar with the series, to be honest, and was equal parts excited and skeptical about reading it. Described as a humorous mystery, and published in the fifties, I was worried it might be too silly, or too dated. I’ve also grown a little wary of mysteries or detective novels written back in this era due to extreme sexism. (Which is to be expected to some extent, and I do take the time frame into consideration, but some older titles are just too abusive in one way or another for me to be able show more to enjoy it.)

However, I needn’t have worried. This mystery/police procedural is an absolute delight!

Small towns are often deceptively wholesome. Flaxborough is a fine example of that. It is a small, sleepy seaside community, quite dignified, but it is hiding a shocking secret.

When a man passes away, the cause of death is barely remarked upon, it certainly didn’t raise any criminal alarms, but when his neighbor dies shortly thereafter, under rather odd circumstances, Detective Inspector Purbright is called in to investigate. What at first appeared to be an unusual way of committing suicide, may have been murder. It’s up to Purbright and Sargent Love to solve the puzzle.

This really is an exceptional mystery novel. It deals with some rather seedy topics without being graphic. In fact, one must read between the lines, since it isn’t stated outright. Still, there were conversations, about other issues that had yet to become hot button topics in the average house hold.

The humor is dry and witty, and the dialogue is razor sharp. This first installment is fairly short, and I easily read it in one sitting. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and once again, I am grateful this series is getting some recognition. Any mystery lover will appreciate this story and will be charmed by Love and Purbright. The ending was phenomenal, and a complete and rather shocking surprise!

I believe there are twelve installments in this series and I sincerely hope all of them will be formatted to digital. I am quite impressed with this little gem and would love to read every book in the series!

4 stars show less

What an amazing discovery of this delightful book by Colin Watson, and how wonderful to learn there are more where this came from.

This is an old-style British police procedural with good, solid detective work that takes place in the respectable seaside town of Flaxborough in 1957 or 1958. It is a little gentler and more slow-paced than today's non-stop-action thrillers, but that does not mean it is in any way lacking in suspense, complex plotting, well-developed characters, or a seemingly endless supply of ingenious ways to die.

Prominent citizens of Flaxborough are dropping like flies, and it falls to Detective Inspector Purbright and his team to figure out what is going on. Suicide? Accident? Murder? There are clues aplenty, but they show more don't always lead in the right direction. And just when you think you've got your suspect, he dies.

The ending is a surprise, believable but unexpected and a marvelous lead-in for the next book in the series.

And if nothing at all happened in the storyline, the language alone would be worth a read. It is droll and dry and funny, sometimes laugh out loud funny. I often found myself doing a double-take at some particularly outrageous turn of phrase, or just stopping to read a sentence or paragraph over and over just because the wording was so devilishly clever.

I received a copy of Coffin Scarcely Used from NetGally and Farrago Books. I loved it, and am on my way to read Bump in the Night, the second book in the series, right now. show less

I enjoy "discovering'' mystery authors that I somehow missed over the years. Colin Watson wrote a series of mystery novels, The Flaxborough Chronicles, in the 1950s. Set in a small English town, the stories follow the investigations of DI Walter Purbright. There are 12 novels in the series.

I am delighted that I found this book available for review or I might never have found this series! Reminiscent of Agatha Christie, the story is a semi-cozy mystery (no spurting blood, over-the-top cussing, or gory details, etc) and rather light, but still a police procedural. There are a few adult moments, but nothing too bad. PG-13 sort of stuff. With plenty of dry wit and humor, the mystery moves along with insights into small town life, gossip show more and quirky residents. I'm definitely going to read the rest of this series!

The Basics: Six months previous, a well-known resident of Flaxborough died. There really wasn't anything strange about the death, other than the smallness of his funeral (insert small town gossip here). But now, one of his neighbors has also popped off this mortal coil....and this time there is something very strange indeed. At first it appears to be a suicide, but closer inspection shows it may have been staged to hide a murder. What's going on in the seemingly sleepy hamlet of Flaxborough? DI Purbright is on the case!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! It is a bit dated....but I love classic whodunits and this book reminded me so much of the wit and fun of Agatha Christie novels. Purbright is a delightful main character....a bit bumbling,but dedicated to his job and doing things right. He is also not swayed by social position, power or money. He wants to know the truth....no matter what that truth is. To me, Purbright is like an English version of Columbo. He might seem a bit lacking occasionally to those on the outside, but he's actually quite astute and watching/observing everything.

Great book! I will definitely be reading this entire 12-book series! The humor and mystery combine into a wonderful story! Classic mystery lovers will enjoy this series!

**I voluntarily read an advanced readers copy of this book from Farrago via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.** show less

Mr. Harold Carobleat had "for some time been the last twig on the dead trunk of his ancestry".
Despite his eminent position in the town of Flaxborough the funeral of Three-Car-Carobleat was poorly attended - the minister, only 4 or 5 immediate friends, and his grieving widow.
His business establishment, the ship brokerage firm of Carobleat and Spades, closed almost immediately.

The final outcome might have been very different had Carobleat's next door neighbour, Mr Marcus Gwill, not died within 6 months, apparently eloctrocuted when he climbed the electricity pylon in Callender's Field in the early hours of the morning.

His family were resigned to a verdict of suicide, but as Inspector Purbright observed
"If I had occasion to walk down the show more drive of that house and cross the road and then climb a railing and go twenty yards over a field before clambering up an electricity pylon, I really believe I'd have put my boots on first."

And then there is Mrs Poole, Gwill's housekeeper, who thought he had been very afraid since Carobleat had died, and seems to be going out of her mind herself, talking about walking ghosts.

Nothing adds up for Purbright and he tells the horrified Chief Constable they are looking at murder. His investigation uncovers some very strange goings on indeed.

COFFIN SCARCELY USED is the first in Colin Watson's Flaxborough series, all of which are characterised by a macabre sense of humour. But while other titles in the series, such as THE FLAXBOROUGH CRAB, which I reviewed as a Forgotten Book here, were clearly spoofs on Golden Age murder mysteries, COFFIN SCARCELY USED seemed to me to be less so. The result is a very readable and at the same time cleverly constructed novel, with plenty of light humour both in descriptions and in incidents.
Inspector Purbright is a tenacious investigator, a bit like a dog worrying at a bone, while his underlings don't always grasp the bigger picture.
Although Watson's novels were published over 50 years ago they have weathered the decades well, and are worth searching for in second hand book stores. show less

Coffin, Scarcely Used
By
Colin Watson

I truly didn’t know what to expect when I began reading this book. I didn’t have much cover love for it...it was simply too plain and beige for me. However it was a unique surprise as I read it. Funny, quirky characters plus not just one murder but multiple murders that were not very ordinary. I won’t tell you how the murders occurred...you will have much more fun reading about them.

Quirky characters include the officer in charge...Purbright...as well as quite a few more. Even the housekeeper of one of the victims is quirky!

I think readers will enjoy the marshmallow scene...especially the one that got stuck!

One of Purbight’s thoughts that stuck in my head was this...these cases were filled show more with “enigmas, contradictions, deductions and doubts.” That pretty much describes this enjoyable book.

Readers who love this kind of thought provoking mystery will love this series. I can see why this author wrote so many of these books.

My copy came to me from the publisher and NetGalley and Amazon. I read and reviewed it because I wanted to. show less

Anybody new to the Flaxborough Chronicles by British writer Colin Watson might not be aware of the author's body of work. Born in 1920, dying in 1983, Watson wrote twelve Flaxborough novels in total, renowned for their dry comic styling, set in the small fictional town of Flaxborough, widely believed to be based on Boston in Lincolnshire. Watson worked as a journalist in the area and the characters in his books are rumoured to be caricatures of people he met during his journalistic time.

There are two main people in the novels - Inspector Walter Purbight, a solid, good old English chap type bloke who is a decent, if not slightly dull, fictional police detective. The other is Miss Lucilla Edith Cavell Teatime, the sometimes ladylike, show more sometimes gloriously vulgar, conwoman with a liking for dominoes, whisky and the finer things in life.

These two are less of a pairing and more of a coincidence when it comes to Flaxborough daily life, but each, in their own way, add a glorious sense of very British-ness to what's a quintessentially British, slightly batty, ever so mildly sexist (remembering the timing of the writing) series of novels that I return to time and time again to kickstart my brain into a love of reading when I've lost the plot.

COFFIN, SCARCELY USED is the opening salvo of the series, written in 1958, introducing in a perfect, low key manner, Inspector Walter Purbright, who finds himself investigating a most unexpected crime spree in the quiet, respectable little town of Flaxborough, particularly as the spree is amongst it's leading citizens. Starting out with the supposed natural death of esteemed councillor Harold Carobleat, followed by the distinctly odd electrocution of newspaper owner Marcus Gwill, a very unlikely scenario of illegal goings on starts to reveal itself.

Remember, when you're reading these novels, that this was written in 1958, so there are some mildly sexist stereotypes with most of the women either devious or hysterical, but it is fortunately, on the mild side, played mostly for humour rather than as a blatant put down. Having said that, the stuffed shirt men don't always come off much better and the digs at the "commercial classes" are there if you look closely as well.

The humour, and the sense of caricature is the vital part of these novels, although the plots themselves are well developed, with plenty of red herrings, and more than enough intrigue to keep the reader interested and guessing.

As mentioned though, I have used this series for years now, after first discovering it in the mid 1970's, as a way of kickstarting a jaded reading brain. They are fun, they are more than a bit daft, but they are well crafted, endlessly entertaining and just the thing, particularly if you're a fan of the very best of British, slightly dotty, entertainment.

The full series, in order is:

Coffin, Scarcely Used (1958)
Bump in the Night (1960)
Hopjoy Was Here (1962)
Lonelyheart 4122 (1967) (in which Miss Lucilla Teatime makes her first appearance)
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) (Miss Teatime does not make an appearance in this one)
Plaster Sinners (1980)
Whatever's Been Going on at Mumblesby? (1982)

It's also worth reading his study of interwar thrillers (if you can find a copy) Snobbery with Violence which Watson wrote in 1971. show less