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George Bellairs was the pseudonym of Harold Blundell (19021985), an English crime author best known for the creation of Detective-Inspector Thomas Littlejohn. Born in Heywood, near Lancashire, Blundell introduced his famous detective in his first novel, Littlejohn on Leave (1941). A low-key Scotland Yard investigator whose adventures were told in the Golden Age style of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, Littlejohn went on to appear in more than fifty novels, including The Crime at Halfpenny Bridge (1946), Outrage on Gallows Hill ), and The Case of the Headless Jesuit (1950). In the 1950s Bellairs relocated to the Isle of Man, a remote island in the Irish Sea, and began writing full time. He continued writing Thomas Littlejohn novels for the rest of his life, taking occasional breaks to write standalone novels, concluding the series with An Old Man Dies (1980).
Praise for the Inspector Littlejohn mysteries “Assured prose, well-drawn characters, and the atmosphere of 1940s wartime England . . . well worth the reader’s time.” - Publishers Weekly “Everything is quite comparable in tone to a really good Simenon.” - The New York Times “Dryly ceremonious wit [that] shines from the very first page.” - Kirkus Reviews
