Death before breakfast

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.