Delete statement in SQL is very slow

Question

I have statements like this that are timing out:

DELETE FROM [table] WHERE [COL] IN ( \'1\', \'2\', \'6\', \'12\', \'24\', \'7\', \'3\', \'5\')

Answer 1

In my case the database statistics had become corrupt. The statement

delete from tablename where col1 = 'v1' 

was taking 30 seconds even though there were no matching records but

delete from tablename where col1 = 'rubbish'

ran instantly

running

update statistics tablename

fixed the issue