While most Germans were happy to wait out the end of the bloody conflicts of World War Two in a sleepy POW camp in rural Scotland, one man was determined to escape! His name was Gefreiter Fritz Schmitt -- or at least that's what he said it was. Schmitt knew he had to get out before wily civilian Police Sergeant Dick McKay uncovered the dark secret of what he did in Ardennes only months before...
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.