I'm quite sure that the four-footed friends who benefited from such charities as "The Four Foot Haven" so generously supported by Mrs. Palgrove would have been quite grateful for that lady's energetic fundraising on their behalf. At the same time, however, Mrs. Palgrove had her doubts about another, more - er - questionable charity, such as "The New World Pony Rescue Campaign," which appeared to be controlled by people not native to the English village of Flaxborough, that charming (but distinctly free-wheeling) little town. In fact, Mrs. Palgrove was threatening to expose the rival fundraisers as frauds. So is that why she was murdered? For that matter, was Mrs. Palgrove the author of several anonymous letters to key citizens begging for protection from someone (not identified in the letters, surely a curious detail) who was trying to murder her? It was certainly a puzzle to try the ingenuity and the instincts of Detective Inspector Purbright and his assistant, Sergeant Love, charged with the mostly thankless chore of maintaining the law and the peace in a town which had its own ideas about propriety, decency and charity. You'll find the details today in Charity Ends at Home, written in 1968, one of the Flaxborough Chronicles by Colin Watson. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.
While I was on vacation for the past couple of weeks, I posted here as one of my "From the Vault" features Hopjoy Was Here, another of Watson's very funny books about Flaxborough, a village described by one of its inhabitants as "just another high-spirited town...like Gomorrah." Both books are quite funny, but they're also good mysteries; Charity Ends at Home is described by its publisher as s police procedural with a gentler pace than is fashionable today. True, but with plenty of good characters, most of them eccentric but charming (if somewhat larcenous and oversexed), I think you're likely to enjoy Charity Ends at Home.
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