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.

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

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.