Bellairs’ books are always a pleasure to read. Dead March is delightfully atmospheric and a reminder of a more genteel past. And what a good mystery. Such a refined lady to have met such an unpleasant end. Did she know that she knew too much? A most enjoyable read enhanced by a discreet and never vulgar vocabulary.

Penelope Blow tries for three days to contact Inspector Littlejohn at Scotland Yard, but he's away at a trial.  After the third try, she leaves a message, and her nephew (actually cousin), Harold, comes to London to bring her home to Nesbury.  Penelope is one of the Blow family who lives in the old bank building.  Her father, William, had run the bank for many years, and had three daughters.  One was dead, and the the third was Honoria still living in the home.   Others living there are William's nephews, Harold, a lawyer, and Ralph (the current head of the bank), and Ralph's wife Lenore.   Honoria has been sick and told Penelope she thought she was being poisoned.  Penelope's suitor of many years before, Reverend Claplady, has been corresponding with her, and recommended Littlejohn.  

When Penelope returns home, the doctors are ready to take Honoria to a nursing home, and while the men are discussing it, Lenore goes to help Honoria, and Penelope goes to water her daffodils and falls out the window.  When Littlejohn gets home, he gets Penelope's message and goes to Nesbury only to find that Penelope had fallen out the window and died.  The court called it an accident, but Littlejohn didn't think it was and convinces the local Inspector Paston to work with him. 

The case is very complicated.  Everyone seemed to have liked Penelope, although the men of the family didn't seem to respect her.  Harold and Ralph Blow do not want the police to come into their house.  Who was poisoning Honoria?  There are a lot of secrets in the Blow family, including financial secrets which the police soon realize may have something to to with the murder of Penelope.  Littlejohn interviews a lot of people, and gradually get more and more information about the Blow family and their finances, and their activities.  

The plot is very clever, and the denouement is surprising.  This is another excellent mystery about Inspector Littlejohn.

Originally published in 1951, this mystery is another in the Inspector Littlejohn series. These books are great reads for vintage mystery fans and anyone who enjoys intelligent writing, wonderful descriptions, and interesting characterizations.

Inspector Littlejohn is away at a trial when a troubled older lady calls in several times at Scotland Yard to see him. She leaves a note, but before Littlejohn can follow up, she dies in an odd accident. When he goes to talk to her family to try and figure out what happened, he finds a suspicious and disgruntled bunch of greedy and unpleasant people and a sad and sordid history. He and his assisting officer Cromwell spend some time nosing around and untangling the confusing stories.

George Bellairs writes well, and his narrative descriptions of the characters are entertaining, astute, and nicely written. Littlejohn himself is an appealing character. The book is nicely paced and there are some humorous scenes well incorporated in the story.  Thanks to the publisher and to Net Galley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I always enjoy Bellairs, and more often than not I am able to solve for M before the denouement. Not this time, A lovely little string of twists and turns in the plot as clues were left along the trail sent me down various dead ends. There was a high tension in the first 2/3 or so of the book, and that kept me more on the alert than usual. Character development in this episode also proved more interesting as some surprising dimensions of key players came to light in repeated encounters. Recommend very much for fans of Littlejohn and Cromwell.

In this book, Bellairs returns to a favourite setting and character type - the English town with the quite nasty local bigwig - or, in this case, bigwigs. There's something even more unpleasant than usual going on inside a family which still has some local clout, although the reader, if not the characters, can see that the postwar world is rapidly passing them by. Nevertheless, they are still trying to live as they always have, controlling everything and everyone around them with cruelty and bullying.

Inspector Littlejohn is away on important business when the story begins, and so doesn't receive the message left by the rather dithery old lady up from the country until he returns. By then, of course, matters have reached a crisis, but he is able to work around the local Chief Constable, and with the help of the local officers, and of course his invaluable sergeant, he solves the case. 

As usual, Bellairs has produced a well-constructed and entertaining novel. The setting, always one of his strengths, vividly portrays England in the post-war period. In such a period of change, some of the things lost were of value - for example, the kind of service provided by an old-fashioned hotel is almost gone, replaced by immigrant labour, hired by a distant management company, probably to save money on wages. Although the power of the local elite, with their history of underpaying local labour, it also in a terminal decline, it is not quite gone.  

All in all this is an enjoyable read for anyone who enjoys novels set in this period.

Agora have published a number of Inspector Littlejohn mysteries over recent years and Dead March for Penelope Blow is another worthy addition to the list.

The author, George Bellairs, wrote a number of books in this series and it is good to see them being introduced to a new modern audience.

Definitely recommended for Golden Age Mystery lovers

Penelope Blow travels to London to consult Littlejohn, but he is not available and she is forced back to her country home without sharing her concerns. Not long after, she topples with her window box of flowers to her death. The locals rule it an accident, but Littlejohn is not satisfied. Good procedural mystery with interesting characters, effective red herrings, colorful characters, and one of the nastiest wills I’ve ever seen.

Another brilliant mystery novel from the late, great, novelist,  George Bellairs. Originally published in 1951 this is the latest of his wonderful examples of detective fiction at it's best, being reissued by Agora Books. 

The plot features Thomas Littlejohn, the Scotland Yard policeman who appears in the vast majority of Mr Bellairs' books. The Blow family are one of the 'important' families of Nesbury, formerly the owners of the local bank, the family still reside in the Old Bank House, cared for by aging servants.  When the story opens, Penelope Blow, a frail elderly woman is in London trying to see Inspector Littlejohn, who unfortunately is away giving evidence in a murder trial. Penelope is tracked down by Harold Blow and returned to the family home where she falls from the window of her bedroom shortly after arriving.

The story unfolds to reveal secrets and skullduggery of mammoth proportions before Littlejohn, aided by Sergeant Cromwell, uncovers the culprits. As ever George Bellairs provides the reader with a well written, complex plot peopled by a large cast of characters, many of whom bear delightfully individual names...the Reverend  Ethelred Claplady who played an important role in Death of a Busybody, makes a guest appearance, the Blow's butler is Jelley and the local chemist is Mr Quake, to name but a few. To read one of George Bellairs' detective stories is to step back in time, I cannot fault them and I have read a lot of them, thankfully he was a prolific author.

Dead March for Penelope Blow


My thanks to the publishers for an advance review copy of this book.

A sixty four year old spinster falls to her death while watering a window box of wilted daffodils. A well loved timid soul, she had just been brought back from London where she had made strenuous attempts to speak with Inspector Littlejohn, who was away from Scotland Yard and busy elsewhere as had been reported in the newspapers. She and then her sister’s doctors all suspect her sister is being poisoned. The dysfunctional Blows family in the Bank House are and have always been big in the little world of Nesbury and so provide a perfect setting for another entertaining George Bellairs murder mystery.

Inspector Littlejohn and the ever capable Cromwell are in their element here with a cast of below stairs characters who could have survived from the nineteenth century and old world banking practices with archaic dress codes a delight in themselves.

The early chapters show how much Bellairs admired George Simenon (his pen name pays homage to this) and something of the bleakness of the human condition comes through the writing in them. But we are soon in the more comforting world of cherubic aged clerics and small town religious minorities, laced with gargantuan meals of roast pork and suet pudding followed by fruit cake teas.

Our intrepid detectives nonetheless eliminate suspects in their customarily unhurried way and everything comes to a satisfying conclusion.

This is an enjoyable read and I am happy to recommend it.

Even if it's not amongst the best Bellairs I read it's an engrossing and entertaining read.
The plot is complex and well developed, the setting is interesting and I loved the description of the small town dominated by the banker family. 
The characters are well developed and there's a mix of good and bad that makes them fascinating.
The mystery is solid and it kept me reading.
An enjoyable read, recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

This book, while not the best of Bellairs, is still a good summer read.  The characters fit his usual mold of down to earth, loud and rowdy, pompous , innocent, vamp. There’s someone for everyone to like or dislike. I felt the case resolution to be a bit unwieldy. Too many fingers on the pie.

Inspector Littlejohn is one of my favourite literary characters and George Bellairs always writes him a good yarn. Great characters - many with wonderful names, strong convoluted stories and wonderfully colourful scenes. Good old fashioned policing and fascinating social history unwittingly written seventy years ago. I would like to thank Netgalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review an e-ARC of this book.

278 pages

4 stars

Mrs. Penelope Blow, recently widowed, lives in a house full of horrible people. When she falls out of an upstairs window, the local constabulary puts it down to an accidental fall. When Inspector Littlejohn arrives on the scene, he notices some discrepancies. He is not so sure that it was an accident. 

The reader gets to meet some very colorful and interesting people in this story. As in all of Mr. Bellairs' books, there are moments of humor interspersed in the storyline. This is an old time mystery written with style and panache. I truly enjoy the Littlejohn books, and am always glad to see another come out in reprint. This was a time before forensics and all the technological gadgets that we have nowadays. These cases were solved with foot leather and superb interviewing techniques. 

I want to thank NetGalley and Agora Books for forwarding to me a copy of this most delightful book for me to read, enjoy and review.