Great Tradition

• Plaster Sinners by Colin Watson
  Eyre Methuen, 160 pp, £5.95, September 1980, ISBN 0 413 39040 3
• Photo-Finish by Ngaio Marsh
  Collins, 262 pp, £5.95, September 1980, ISBN 0 00 231857 1
• The Predator by Russell Braddon
  Joseph, 192 pp, £5.95, October 1980, ISBN 0 7181 1958 4

‘What is this but a Thirties detective story?’ asks the London policeman who finds himself in the thick of the latest Flaxborough murder. It’s a piece of miscalculated self-consciousness on Colin Watson’s part – almost the only miscalculation in the book. The Flaxborough Chronicles embody a great many of the virtues that make the golden-age detective story still one of the most widely read literary forms. They have their share of cosiness, with menace lurking underneath; they exploit class-consciousness – humorously, with none of that deadening Thirties snobbery; they use traditional humours, and gently mock traditional humours, and gently mock traditional mores.