Death in Dark Glasses

Author George Bellairs set a number of his novels in the Isle of Man, but Death in Dark Glasses was the first. It’s where we first meet the saintly Caesar Kinrade, the octogenarian archdeacon in the Isle of Man. But the tale doesn’t begin with Kinrade. Widower Finloe Oates vanishes, and the corpse of......more

Can't recommend this one despite my fondness for Inspector Littlejohn and Sargeant Cromwell working a case together. This was a rusty bucket of complexity in unlikely country settings with rustic characters in the extreme. Dead bodies in attics, lakes, mines...forged checks and letters here, there,......more

Littlejohn is up against it this time in a case that involves murder, fraud and blackmail and a perpetrator who leads him on a merry dancer from Netherby to London to the Isle of Man, round banks and insurance companies, shops, hospitals and boarding houses. The poor man was exhausted. This is Littl......more

Just re-read after many years. Beautifully written as always by Bellairs with his wonderful witty descriptions of the characters. This one charts the start of Littlejohn's love affair with The Isle of Man and his on going friendship with The Reverend Kinrade. I would have rated it higher but for the f......more

As bloody as the St Valentine's Day Massacre, but without the tommyguns. It's been a while since I've read a book in the Chief Inspector Littlejohn series and this one is just as good as I remember them. They are "cozy" mysteries in the sense that the action takes place in small villages or rural are......more