Death of a Tin God by George Bellairs swept me back to the '60s, which is when the book was written. But in any event, it is a very campy thriller with beautiful, scantily clad women, uber rich handsome men, exotic locations and a cliff hanger finish for our hero, Superintendent Littlejohn. I enjoyed this mystery as much for the unraveling of the tale of multiple murders as for the delightful snapshots of life in the jet-setting '60s (or at least life as the movies and TV portrayed it!)

Again George Bellairs does not disappoint, with elements of the rich and famous, movie stars and murder.This book takes us to the Isle of Mann, France, London and Dublin in search of a killer - was it for love, money or jealousy - a fine trail of red herrings and a suspenseful ending. is what awaits the reader. All the makings of a great read.

This is number 36 in the Chief Inspector Littlejohn series.
It is a lovely reunion with the Isle of Man and the South of France, and also with archdeacon Kinrade and the french inspector Dorange.
After being in Dublin on a missing person case, Littlejohn is visiting his old friend Caesar Kinrade on the Isle of Man. This short holiday is interrupted when the famous actor Hal Vale, is electrocuted in his hotelroom. The local Inspector Knell asks Littlejohn for help. There are lots of theater people staying in the hotel, and also his co-star Monique Dol., who was to be his fourth wife. She has however fled the hotel and the search for her takes Littlejohn to the French Riviera and his old friend and colleague Inspector Dorange. In France very important people are involved and lives are at risk, when they clear up the crime.
It is a very entertaining and amusing crime novel with dangerous confrontations. I enjoyed reading it.

Written just as he was preparing for his retirement from his day job as a Manchester bank manager and move to the Isle of Man this is George Bellairs at his best.
The author knew the Isle of Man, the French Riviera and Dublin well and used them as a backdrop to several of his novels. This time the plot involves film actors, dodgy financiers and an even dodgier bank owner (perhaps a bit of humourous self-parody here?) and respected policemen from forces in the Isle of Man, France and Dublin, but it is of course Superintendent Littlejohn who is centre stage.
A beautifully written mystery which can be read again and again with continual pleasure.

Death of a Tin God was a moderately enjoyable read, though I found it less engaging than the few other books I have read by George Bellairs. Partly, this is because the crime, and most of the suspects and other persons of interest, revolve around celebrities of the movie world and of high finance, neither of which holds any appeal for me. (Refreshingly, neither Superintendent Littlejohn nor indeed the author are starstruck either.)

The “tin god” of the title is movie star Hal Vale, who is found electrocuted in his bathtub shortly after his arrival on the Isle of Man to film movie sequences with his costar and rumored future fourth wife, Monique Dol (herself thrice divorced, though still a young woman). When evidence suggests that the death was not accidental, and when Miss Dol makes a very hasty departure to France by private plane, Inspector Knell calls in his friend Thomas Littlejohn, who happens to be on the Isle of Man visiting his old friend Archdeacon Caesar Kinrade, to help unravel the high-society and international complications.

Inspector Knell and Archdeacon Kinrade, familiar from previous books in the series, continue to be present throughout this narrative. Inspector Knell is instrumental in the investigation; the Archdeacon, who appears to function chiefly as a pleasant and humanizing change from the pomposity and moral vacancy of other characters, turns out himself to be crucial in Littlejohn’s successful resolution of the case.

Bellairs’ writing displays his characteristic quirks: pithy sentence fragments in descriptions of place or actions, exclamation marks in narrative paragraphs, and verbal virtuosity. In this particular book, I could have wished for fewer fragments and exclamations, and for more instances of linguistic dexterity. (An example of the latter: “The body of Hal Vale....was carried through the luggage exit and deposited in the medical-legal tumbril.” The mundane fact of a corpse being removed to a mortuary van is thus adorned with ironic and admirably concise commentary on the contrast between the adulation of adoring fans on Vale’s arrival at the hotel and the indignity of his departure as a piece of luggage; also on the contrast between French aristocrats being taken to the guillotine for execution, and the pseudo-aristocratic Vale – the tin god without true glory – being taken, already executed, for analysis.)

The pace of events seemed rather slow throughout most of the book. Towards the end, the pace picked up quite considerably, with rapid plot twists and with dramatic, almost melodramatic, intensity in the denouement.

In sum, I’d rate this book between 3 ½ and 4 stars. It isn’t my favorite among Bellairs’ books, but it does leave me eager to read more of the Littlejohn stories.


This review has been submitted (10/11) to Amazon.com.

This instalment in the Littlejohn series sees the inspector flying back and forth between London, the Isle of Man, Dublin and the south of France as he tries to solve the murder of a film actor, just arrived on location on the island. The denouement is very tense. I liked it a lot.

Littlejohn Takes A Holiday…
Hollywood has descended! The Isle of Man will probably never be the same and nor will an unsuspecting Inspector Littlejohn, after all the poor man has only arrived for a short holiday. It’s not long before Littlejohn finds a death on his hands. But, is it murder? A worthy tale with an excellent sense of place and with the ever empathetic Inspector on top form.

‘Littlejohn wondered where he’d seen the man before.’

Superintendent Littlejohn of Scotland Yard was looking forward to a few days holiday. He’d travelled to Ireland on a missing person case. Clara Tebbs from Shepherd’s Bush had gone missing in Dublin. The Irish police thought they’d found her: an unconscious woman in a city hospital, but she turned out to be someone else. So Littlejohn was pleased to receive a telegram from his old friend the Reverend Caesar Kinrade, Archdeacon of Man, inviting him to drop in for a couple of days on the way back to London. He is on the same plane as Hal Vale the film star, who is on his way to the Isle of Man to make a film with Miss Monique Dol.

When Hal Vale is found dead in his suite at the Carlton Hotel, later that day, local policeman Inspector Knell asks for Superintendent Littlejohn’s assistance. Has Vale taken his own life, was it an accident or has he been murdered? Meanwhile, Ms Dol has fled from the hotel. It seems as though Miss Dol and Mr Vale were about to marry – as soon as his latest divorce was finalised.

In pursuit of Miss Dol, Littlejohn travels via London to Nice where his old friend Inspector Dorange of the Surété assists him. Miss Dol has fled to Nice to see the second of her three husbands: Paul Mauron, a very wealthy and influential man. And then another man is found dead in Miss Dol’s apartment in Nice, just after she left it.
This novel has a quite complicated plot, with several possible suspects and a selection of different motives. I kept reading, keen to find out who murdered Vale and why. There are a couple of twists and a quite dramatic scene near the end which had me wondering whether Littlejohn himself would survive.

I’ve only read a couple of the Inspector Littlejohn novels so far and look forward to reading more.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Agora Books for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Scotland Yard Superintendent Littlejohn is visiting a friend on the Isle of Man. A movie is being shot on the island and popular actor, Hal Vale, has just arrived to the delight of fans. His French co-star, Monique Dols, is rumored to soon become Vale's fourth wife. The same day Vale and Littlejohn arrive, Vale is electrocuted in his bath and Monique hastily flees to the French Riviera. Littlejohn is called in to investigate and follows Monique to the Mediterranean. Soon the movie's financial backer is murdered. There is plenty of action and misdirection for mystery buffs. French Inspector Dorange and Rev. Caesar Kinrade from previous Littlejohn books also are featured. A very enjoyable read.

This is the fourth book I’ve read from George Bellairs’ Inspector Littlejohn series and although I haven’t been reading them in order, it doesn’t seem to matter at all. Each novel works as a standalone mystery and there’s very little focus on Littlejohn’s personal life so you can easily jump around from an early book to a later one and back again without feeling that you’ve missed anything important.

Death of a Tin God was first published in 1961 and begins with Thomas Littlejohn (now a Superintendent rather than an Inspector) flying from Dublin to the Isle of Man to visit his friend, Caesar Kinrade, the Archdeacon of Man. Littlejohn is looking forward to a quiet break, but his arrival coincides with the death of Hal Vale, a Hollywood star who has been filming on the island. Hal is found electrocuted in the bath in his hotel room and the circumstances suggest that it was not an accident. Littlejohn finds himself assisting the local police with their investigations and as the mystery deepens, he travels to the South of France to look for the answers.

I enjoyed this book but found the solution a bit predictable as the murderer turned out to be the person I had suspected from the beginning. There were some clever twists and red herrings along the way that did put some doubt into my mind, but I still wasn’t at all surprised when the truth was revealed. However, I very rarely manage to solve a mystery before the detective does, so I don’t mind too much when it occasionally happens! And I do like spending time with Littlejohn and watching him carry out his investigations; he’s not the most memorable of fictional detectives, but that means the focus stays firmly on the plot without his own personality getting in the way. His usual sidekick Sergeant Cromwell is absent for most of the book, but instead he teams up with Inspector Knell of the Manx police and Inspector Dorange in Nice who I believe are also recurring characters in the series and have good working relationships with Littlejohn.

One of the things I’ve loved about the other Bellairs novels I’ve read is the way he creates such a strong cast of supporting characters and suspects. In Dead March for Penelope Blow and A Knife for Harry Dodd in particular, there are some very colourful, larger than life characters who could almost have jumped straight out of the pages of a Dickens novel. In this book, I found the characterisation more bland and less interesting, but maybe that was a reflection of the shallow, vapid celebrity world Bellairs has chosen as the setting for this particular novel. Littlejohn is described several times as feeling slightly out of his depth amongst this assortment of glamorous film stars, ruthless publicity agents and millionaire bankers with yachts, so perhaps the reader is intended to feel the same.

I liked the idea of the book being set on the Isle of Man, as it’s not a common setting for mystery novels (or fiction in general), but it turned out that half of the story actually took place in Aix-en-Provence in France – and neither setting was described as vividly as I would have liked. I know Bellairs set some of the other Littlejohn books on the Isle of Man too, so maybe some of those have more local colour than this one. Although this is not one of my favourite books in the series so far, I’m still looking forward to reading more of them.

This book, written in the early nineteen sixties, is nothing special. It is without praise or blame. I was not impressed by this book. I think I have read better Inspector/Superintendent Littlejohn's books.

Superintendent Littlejohn goes to Dublin to ID a missing British woman, finds she isn't there, and then goes to the Isle of Man to visit Reverend Caesar Kinrade. Shortly after he arrives, Inspector Knell of the local police calls for Littlejohn's help as a well known actor has been found electrocuted in his bath at the Hotel which is filled with a lot of theater people. His costar, Monique Dol who was supposedly about to be his fourth wife, has grabbed a small bag and fled to London. They soon find that she has gone on from there in a private plane to Nice to see her second of three husbands, Paul Mauron, a man with lots of money and clout. Littlejohn calls his friend Inspector Dorange, who meets him in Nice.

This book has a complicated plot including lovers quarrels, financial fraud, and good policing. At first there are several possible suspects for the killing. The characters involved range between Dublin, Isle of Man, Nice, and London. Over time, Littlejohn finds out several people were seen coming out of the actor's hotel room shortly before the body is found. Money is definitely one of the possible issues, as Mauron is currently the backer of the movie being made, but there are at least two others talking about taking over the financing. There is also another suitor for the hand of Monique, and the question of who gets all the money the dead man had.

There are amusing scenes, and some very exciting confrontations including the imminent danger of two important policemen being shot. I always enjoy the Littlejohn books.

3.5 stars

Inspector Littlejohn is far away from his usual territory in this 60's era mystery, ranging from the Isle of Man to Dublin to the French Riviera.

He arrives on the Isle of Man after a film star is found murdered while on location. The victim's supposed fiance and co-star has disappeared to take refuge with her ex-husband. Unusually, the local police force is right on top of things and Littlejohn and they work well together.

He doggedly pursues every red herring and is able to trace a path to the killer. I missed his usual interactions with British villagers, but he has plenty of opportunity to question and investigate. Thanks to the publisher and to Net Galley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This is the 36th Inspector Littlejohn Mystery written by George Bellairs. After this he wrote 22 more mysteries. How he found time for his day job as a bank examiner beats me! Not all the mysteries are available on Kindle but many are. I'm a fan of these mysteries and have read about all that are available in Kindle format. Death of a Tin God is a mystery well worth reading as are all the other Littlejohn mysteries. This particular mystery is centered on the murder by electrocution of a major movie star while he's taking a bath in his hotel room on the Isle of Mann. He's there ready to begin filming as the lead actor together with his co-star Monique Dol, along with producers, directors, financial managers and film crew. Rather surprising the action moves to France after that and the action continues. It's a well crafted mystery that I heartedly recommend.

This review has been based upon a complementary copy of Death of a Tin God from Net Galley, which I was pleased to receive.

Review of Death of a Tin God.
George Bellairs detective Inspector Littlejohn is more often to be found dealing with small town personalities such as bank managers and shopkeepers etc., but this book starts with film stars and wealthy financiers. There are therefore less of George Bellairs usual quirky characters but as he is such a good writer it's nice to have slight change of style from him - but this murder mystery is no less devious for that. The characters are still believable and well-rounded. What an inspiration for Ipso books to re-publish George Bellairs' books and how wonderful that he wrote so many!!

This is an excellent, fast paced and gripping novel that I read in one sitting.
It starts as classic whodunnit but it's also full of irony about the show-biz and a certain type of high class.
Plenty of suspects and possible culprits, I wasn't able to guess who-did-it and why.
I don't want to spoil anything but some of the topics are quite modern and they seem to anticipate more modern mysteries.
The last part was breathtaking and I couldn't guess the last twists.
I had a lot of fun and highly recommend it.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Thanks to Angora and Net Galley for this ARC. Another great installment in the little john series. I'm so glad these are being republished.

A movie star’s murder on the Isle of Man, surrounded by the kind of quirky, glamorous characters you might expect and which are brought to life so well by Bellairs. Littlejohn also handles a comic side missing persons case in Dublin and reunites with Reverand Kinraid and Commissaire Dorange in the South of France. Great fun right through the very dramatic denoument and the quip about movies at the end.