This image is the cover for the book Case of the Demented Spiv, The Inspector Littlejohn Mysteries

Case of the Demented Spiv, The Inspector Littlejohn Mysteries

When a petty hoodlum encounters murder most foul, Inspector Littlejohn must uncover the dark secrets of a sleepy English village in this classic mystery.

It’s a quiet night at the Oddfellow’s Arms until a stranger walks in. He looks like your average, untrustworthy, street corner spiv. But when he starts ranting to anyone who will listen about a dead body at Fennings’ Mill, he seems more like a raving lunatic.

When local police investigate the mad-man’s tale, they find a grimly peculiar corpse: the face is smeared with theatrical makeup and a false mustache is pasted neatly over the lip. Once reporters descend on the tiny village, Scotland Yard sends Inspector Littlejohn to assist the investigation. But he quickly discovers that more than a few residents are telling lies, and the victim’s costume conceals a truly perplexing case.

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).

Agora Books