Death of a Tin God, The Inspector Littlejohn Mysteries
In this British mystery, a Scotland Yard detective follows a deadly trail from the Isle of Man to the South of France to solve a movie star’s murder.
The glamour of Hollywood has descended upon the Isle of Man. But behind this glossy façade, something sinister stirs. Superintendent Littlejohn thought he was in for a few days’ holiday, but when the depraved movie star Hal Vale is found dead in his hotel room, Littlejohn is called to investigate.
As motives and rumors abound, this star-studded pursuit reaches from London and Dublin to the French Riviera. With the help of his old friend, Inspector Dorange of the Sûreete´ at Nice, Littlejohn follows the trail from the sensation headlines to the industry’s shadowy tycoons.
George Bellairs
George Bellairs was the pseudonym of Harold Blundell (1902–1985), 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 (1949), 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).
