A Knife for Harry Dodd (The Inspector Littlejohn Mysteries)

There are six deaths in this novel; one in a road accident, one stabbing , one smothering, one bash on the head, one throttling and a drowning. All are connected to Harry Dodd and his estranged family.Harry is stabbed on his way from the pub to the bungalow, misnamed “Mon Abri”, which he shares with his mistress and her mother.Littlejohn and Cromwell begin an investigation which uncovers a tangle of relationships, several wills, and a lot of financial wheeling and dealing. As usual, not everyone should be taken at face value; one woman and one man prove to be especially adept deceivers.This is vintage Bellairs. Although there are no great descriptive passages concerning landscape and buildings, there are plenty of eccentric and memorably sketched characters and lots of flashes of humour. The plotting is solid and the ending stronger than in many of the books.“Radix malorum est cupiditas” might be a suitable epigraph, as here the love of/desire for money is at the root of all the evil which unfolds.

As a non-driver, I was impressed by Dorothy's ability to drive down the hill with her mother, pick up Harry, and get drive back up the hill. I'm less impressed that they discovered he'd been stabbed, yet still drove him home. And it's a shame he was dead by the time they got him home.Cromwell and Littlejohn work as an expert team in this novel. For Bellairs, the plot moves on at an unusually fast pace. There are some moments of humour despite the high body count. It's very well plotted with all the sub-plots deftly woven together by the end of the novel. Definitely a 5-star jobbie.

Harry Dodd is knifed in the back outside his local pub and because his brother is an MP Scotland Yard, in the form of Chief Inspector Littlejohn and Sergeant Cromwell, is called in. As the police unravel Harry Dodd's rather complicated life there are more murders and plenty of suspects.A Knife For Harry Dodd shows its age in the police procedure and the attitudes of the author and his characters but I found this slice of 50s Britain interesting as it is so different to how we live now. At the same time it is a great read due to the clever plotting which has plenty of twists and kept me guessing for a good part of the book. I might have been tempted to give it 5 stars if it wasn't for the dreadful editing - no- one read it, obviously, after running the spell check.

The book goes along quite well and what seems like a straightforward murder story acquires a large number of subplots and plenty to mislead the reader. Justice is done at the end with both murderers meeting a watery grave. The characters are for the most part strange almost to the point of being caricatures. It’s entertaining but almost reaches the point where the reader may feel that the writer is a little bored with the medium and is embellishing it to amuse himself.

I really enjoy reading 'old' books as you get so much information about what life was like - not just the story the author wanted to tell. I just wish Endeavour Press paid more attention to proofreading before they publish.

3 star slow. Not the authors best work, slow in parts and simply does not grip like others. However an easy read for a day or two on the beach.

Excellent service and a great, original edition.

Very good read