BOOK REVIEW: Bump in the Night by Colin Watson

I received this book for free from Netgalley. This did not influence my review.

I loved the first book in the A Flaxborough Mystery Series: Coffin, Scarcely Used and was eager to get to book 2: Bump in the Night. This series by British author Colin Watson from the 1950s/60s is being re-released in electronic form, and I’m thrilled to have discovered them through Netgalley.

That said, I’d urge you to start with book one, because book two wouldn’t have hooked me by itself. It can be read as a stand-alone, but the charm of its protagonist would be missing.

Bump in the Night is set in a town nearby to Flaxborough, named Chalmsbury. It begins with a middle-of-the-night explosion that destroys a statue/water fountain in a local park that had been dedicated to a local luminary. A series of similar unexplained explosions follows. The shocked and entertained locals discuss the events for a few chapters before the police chief, Inspector Hector Larch, becomes involved. As an inspector, he’s clearly out of his league. His method is a rather prejudiced bullying of whatever witness he comes across in the hopes of extracting a confession. The townspeople know him too well, however, to be bullied. He is aided by a young policeman named Worple who is more intelligent and possibly more capable. But the reader’s introduction to Worple shows him as somewhat lazy and obstructionist, so it’s hard to get behind him as the investigation proceeds.

The townspeople are, as in Coffin, Scarcely Used, a collection of oddball characters/caricatures. But they are not as endearing as those of Flaxborough. The physical descriptions are still written with the dry wit of book one, but some seem more labored. The characters’ quirks are more irritating, their habits more tawdry. And Larch’s aggressive and ineffective methods give the book a meandering, aimless feeling.

Thankfully, just as I was wondering if it was worth plodding on, Inspector Purbright is called in from neighboring Flaxborough. What a relief! Continuity was restored to the series and the clever, good-souled detective shows up to move things along. Pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place. The townspeople reveal hidden depths–not all that deep, but at least they are less one-dimensional. The pace picks up and I am intrigued by the crime.

Obviously, I wasn’t as enamored of book two as I was of book one, and yet, on the whole, it was a satisfying read. Purbright remains a compelling protagonist. Hopefully, he will be more present in book 3, because I’m still a fan of the series and want to see what he does next.