The Body in the Dumb River: A Yorkshire Mystery

by George Bellairs

Overview

Discover the captivating treasures buried in the British Library's archives. Largely inaccessible to the public until now, these enduring British classics were written in the golden age of detective fiction.

"A decent, hardworking chap, with not an enemy anywhere. People were surprised that anybody should want to kill Jim."

But Jim has been found stabbed in the back near Ely, miles from his Yorkshire home. His body, clearly dumped in the usually silent ('dumb') river, has been discovered before the killer intended?disturbed by a torrential flood in the night.

Roused from a comfortable night's sleep, Superintendent Littlejohn of Scotland Yard is soon at the scene. With any clues to the culprit's identity swept away with the surging water, Bellairs' veteran sleuth boards a train heading north to dredge up the truth of the real Jim Teasdale and to trace the mystery of this unassuming victim's murder to its source.

The Body in the Dumb River, like all of Bellairs' crime books, delves into the complex inner-workings of an insulated country community. With all the wittiness and suspense of classic British mysteries, this is a story that explores the long-buried secrets of a small town, and the disastrous events that take place when they finally come to light.

Also in the British Library Crime Classics:

Smallbone Deceased

Continental Crimes

Blood on the Tracks

Surfeit of Suspects

Death Has Deep Roots

Checkmate to Murder

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781492699576
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	04/02/2024
Series:	Inspector Littlejohn Series , #35
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	149
Sales rank:	187,845
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

GEORGE BELLAIRS was the pseudonym of Harold Blundell (1902–1985), a prominent banker and philanthropist from Manchester who became the author of a popular series of detective stories featuring Thomas Littlejohn, which were published for nearly forty years.

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).

Editorial Reviews

10/28/2019

First published in 1961, this workmanlike volume in the British Library Crime Classics series finds Bellairs’s Scotland Yarder, Tom Littlejohn, now a superintendent, in the county of Fenshire, where he’s helping the local police wrap up a forgery case. Since a torrential storm that has caused flooding has left the police shorthanded, Fenshire’s chief constable asks Littlejohn to assist with a murder inquiry. James Lane, who ran a ring-toss stand at the Tylecote fair, was found in the Dumb River with a stab wound in his back. Littlejohn learns that Lane’s real name was James Teasdale, an artist who only stayed with his wife, Elvira, at their Yorkshire home on weekends. His name was not Teasdale’s only untruth, as he accounted for his absence during the week to Elvira by claiming that he worked for a firm that had him traveling around several counties. The superintendent looks for motives and suspects in both parts of the dead man’s life. Traditional whodunit fans looking for a well-written puzzle will be satisfied, even if this isn’t Bellairs’s finest work. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly