Part of Series
An elderly sex-pest is at large in DI Purbright’s home town. Leaping out from behind bushes at unsuspecting females, making lewd suggestions and, when challenged, scuttling away with odd off-balance leaps, he soon earns the nickname of the ‘Flaxborough crab’. No one can identify him, and it turns out that quite a few older gentlemen have begun exhibiting over-familiar behavior around the opposite sex. Suave Dr Meadow knows more than he is letting on, yet how can Purbright, aided once again by the fragrant but dodgy Miss Lucy Teatime, get him to talk? Events take a darker turn before the ill-assorted pair succeed in catching their crab.
Author
Colin Watson was educated at the Whitgift School in South Croydon, London. During his career as a journalist he worked in London and Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he was a leader-writer for Kemsley Newspapers. His book Hopjoy Was Here (1962) received the Silver Dagger Award. He was married, with three children, and lived in Lincolnshire. After retiring from journalism he designed silver jewellery. As well as a series of humorous detective novels set in the imaginary town of Flaxborough, featuring Inspector Purbright, Watson also wrote and later revised a study of detective stories and thrillers called Snobbery with Violence.
