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A Knife for Harry Dodd

George Bellairs

George Bellairs was the pseudonym of Harold Blundell (1902—1982). He was, by day, a Manchester bank manager with close connections to the University of Manchester. He is often referred to as the English Simenon, as his detective stories combine wicked crimes and classic police procedurals set in quaint villages. He was born in Lancashire and married Gladys Mabel Roberts in 1930. He was a devoted Francophile and travelled there frequently, writing for English newspapers and magazines and weaving French towns into his fiction. Bellairs’ first mystery, Littlejohn on Leave (1941), introduced his series detective, Detective Inspector Thomas Littlejohn. Full of scandal and intrigue, the series peeks inside small towns in the mid twentieth century, and Littlejohn is injected with humour, intelligence and compassion. He died on the Isle of Man in April 1982 just before his eightieth birthday.

At first, the women hadn’t believed Dodd was dead. They had put him in his pyjamas, fixed up his wound with plaster and lint, and put him to bed. Then, they’d realised he had died quietly whilst in their hands. When Harry Dodd calls Dorothy Nicholls for a ride home from the pub, she and her mother think he’s just had too much to drink. Little do they know that he’s dying of a stab wound to the back. By the time they get him home, he’s dead. Who would want to kill Harry Dodd? To all his friends, Dodd was a kind man living a life of routine. Was it a random attack? Or someone nearer to his inner circle? When Inspector Littlejohn and Cromwell are called in to investigate this murder, they uncover the dark side to the Dodds: a power-hungry family rife with secrets and manipulation. Perhaps Dodd’s life was not as simple as it seemed… As more motives and more enemies emerge, Littlejohn is determined learn if Dodd was the target in a deadly game of revenge. Bogged down by jealousy, greed, and spurned lovers, Littlejohn has more suspects than he can handle. And as the body count rises, it seems he might have more than one murderer on his hands… A Knife for Harry Dodd was first published in 1953.

Men and women 35+ interested in Classic Crime / Traditional British Mysteries