Dead March for Penelope Blow

“Slow and steady wins the case” as a dedicated London policeman puzzles through a fatal fall, a financial mystery, and an eccentric family’s many secrets (Kirkus Reviews).
 
Miss Penelope Blow’s fatal fall from her bedroom window would seem like a tragic accident, if it weren’t for Penelope’s multiple visits to Scotland Yard before her death, trying to get in touch with Inspector Littlejohn. Now, before he ever had a chance to talk to the woman, he’s driven to look deeper into a case that may very well be murder—with no cooperation from Penelope’s wealthy, secretive, and thoroughly odd family . . .
 
“As is often the case in Bellairs’ novels, his prose is often very wryly amusing. . . . One of his most readable tales, offering an interesting mix of characters and a satisfying puzzle to solve.” —Mysteries Ahoy

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).