UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND AUTHOR · DETECTIVE AND MYSTERY · CRIME
George Bellairs
Also known as: Harold Blundell, Hilary Landon
The pen name of Harold Blundell, a British detective novelist. Harold Blundell was a prominent banker and philanthropist from Manchester with close connections to the University of Manchester. He was born in Lancashire and married Gwladys Mabel Roberts in 1930. Over a span of forty years, Blundell as Bellairs wrote over fifty novels in his spare time. He was best known for his popular series featuring gruff, pipe-smoking Detective Inspector Thomas Littlejohn. His books are set at a time when the real life British Scotland Yard would send their most brilliant of sleuths out to the rest of the country to solve their most insolvable of murders. In the late 1950s he moved to the Isle of Man and became a full-time writer. Many of his novels are set on the Isle of Man. He also wrote four books using the pseudonym Hilary Landon.
Most acclaimed
Fear Round About
Chief Inspector Littlejohn #54 A Yard Coroner who had retired to a manor house in the country, said to be haunted, gets mixed up with two characters until an untimely death made them flee. - from Goodreads Mr. Sebastian Dommett, retired county coroner, had led an unhappy life during his career. Originally a member of a legal firm, his partner had decamped with clients’ funds. Then his only daughter had eloped with a policeman, which made Mr. Dommett detest the police and harry them in his court. He ended up by living in fear of someone or something, but never lost his aplomb. Finally, Mr. Dommett, hearing that Chief Superintendent Littlejohn, of Scotland Yard, was approaching retirement, had the temerity to consider offering Littlejohn the job of steward and security officer of a tumbledown manor house his wife inherited. Before Dommett could make a firm offer, however, he was found battered to death and it fell to Littlejohn to collaborate with the local police on the case. The ruined manor house was said to be haunted and of evil repute. Many strange things happened there and among its strange inhabitants before Littlejohn wrapped up the affair. - from georgebellairs.com
The Cursing Stones Murder
>While scallop-dredging off the Isle of Man, the Manx Shearwater drags up a body tied at the ankles and weighed down, obviously not a simple case of drowning. The medical report reveals a grisly and brutal attack on the victim, but who is he? And what had he done to deserve such a fate? >As investigations begin, Cedric Levis, a local philanderer with an unsavoury reputation seems to be missing when letters forwarded to his hotel room in San Reno have been returned, along with a bill for the room he never claimed. Could the murdered man be Cedric Levis? If so, who stayed in that room? >Under the pretence of a vacation, Chief Inspector Littlejohn is invited by his old friend, Archdeacon Kinrade, to unofficially assist with the murder investigation. Kinrade is certain the man accused of the murder is innocent, so Inspector Littlejohn must work to uncover the truth behind the murder and find who took Mr Levis’s hotel room that night. But with the mysterious and malevolent stories surrounding the Cursing Stones, will Littlejohn be able to separate fact from fiction?
Death before breakfast
> On her way to church early one morning, Mrs Jump sees a dead body in the gutter in July Street. Frightened, she hurries on, but her conscience convinces her to return, only to find the body gone. >Doubting herself, she nevertheless tells her boss, Inspector Littlejohn of Scotland Yard, who decides to investigate further. He soon discovers that July Street is full of unusual people. Everyone has a motive. >Everyone is a suspect. >From London to Paris and back, Littlejohn unravels the tangled web of connections between this curious cast of characters to expose the murderer. >First published in 1962, Death Before Breakfast is a Chief Inspector Littlejohn mystery full of intrigue, mysterious motives, and ingenious speculation.