Death in Room Five
Inspector Littlejohn confronts a challenging case across the Channel in this classic mystery from the “venerable” British author (Kirkus Reviews).
When Alderman Dawson is stabbed to death while visiting the Riviera with a group of English tourists, Inspector Littlejohn puts his holiday on hold to assist the French police. But the suspects are plentiful. The culprit could be one of Dawson’s fellow travelers—or perhaps someone who encountered him years ago during World War II. While Littlejohn fends off complaints from the impatient members of the tour group and delves into potential motives, he can only hope that his investigation doesn’t go south along with his much-needed vacation. . . .
“One of the subtlest and wittiest practitioners of the simon-pure British detective story . . . his adroit ironic Inspector Littlejohn is one of the more popular members of the fictional C.I.D.” —The New York Times
“Mr. Bellairs always gives good value.” —The Sunday Times
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 ), 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).
