Bump in the Night is one of these. It depicts a village called Chalmsbury, woken from its dreaminess by a series of explosions. A bomb is planted, every Tuesday night; and the main suspect, Stanley Biggadyke, is a victim of the fourth outrage.

There is a lot of preliminary conversation before the death occurs, and a lot more before the investigator finally arrives on page 79, almost exactly halfway through the book. This is Inspector Purbright, who first appeared in Coffin Scarcely Used, Watson's earlier book. He is in the (Freeman Wills Crofts) Inspector French mould, with hours of the taxpayer's time available to spend nattering with the townsfolk while the case makes little progress. The denoument is based on evidence only made available in the last chapter, and it all seems very arbitrary: really, the murderer could have been almost anyone.

Watson is more interested in his characters than his plot. He shows a variety of these and allows them to develop at length. They're mostly males; his touch with women seems clumsier and less convincing. There is some humour in the story of Biggadyke's practical jokes and the revenge taken for these, and a suggestion of police corruption, but the whole book is much less than the sum of its parts.

Jon.