Member Review

Each book in this series is a separate story with recurring characters who play out their roles with dry humour and a slightly complicated mystery.
There is always a hint of at least some mildly offensive stereotype portrayed in each book. The unique aspect is that despite being a judgemental sort of person, I can see past that to the very twisted and unique way of narration in order to enjoy the tale! They are small books and contain an abundance of dry humour. This particular story starts of with the town of Flaxborough suddenly becoming unsafe for women, especially after it becomes dark. More than efficient criminals, they seem more like bumbling novices who seem to make a fool of themselves. The culprit scuttles like a crab when fleeing the scene, and this gives this unknown person the tag 'The flaxborough crab'. Then things get murkier and revealing much more information would spoil the reading. Lucy Teatime(a sort of con artist from the previous books) is back and plays a significant role in this story and Inspector Purbright and his sidekick Sid Love actually solve this one and there are a lot of strange conversations to keep the story moving.This story has to be read slowly, to provide time for those chuckles that are bound to escape when as you congratulate yourself on identifying a particularly sly barb hidden among other words( I definitely did!)

I am growing very fond of these stories being reprinted by publishers, originally having been written years ago. I am glad I have a chance to read a whole lot of them.