John Herbert Shelley Rowland (1907-1984) was a journalist, author and Unitarian minister. He read Freud, Huxley and, most avidly, H G Wells, who, believed Rowland, were it not for his preachiness, "might have been one of the greatest novelists of all the ages". Though he never considered himself a "novelist" - he began in what spare time he had to write thrillers. Between 1935 and 1950, Herbert Jenkins published seventeen detective novels by Rowland all featuring Inspector Henry Shelley of Scotland Yard.
