George Bellairs was the pseudonym of Harold Blundell (1902—1982). He was, by day, a Manchester bank manager with close connections to the University of Manchester. He is often referred to as the English Simenon, as his detective stories combine wicked crimes and classic police procedurals set in quaint villages.
He was born in Lancashire and married Gladys Mabel Roberts in 1930. He was a devoted Francophile and travelled there frequently, writing for English newspapers and magazines and weaving French towns into his fiction.
Bellairs’ first mystery, Littlejohn on Leave (1941), introduced his series detective, Detective Inspector Thomas Littlejohn. Full of scandal and intrigue, the series peeks inside small towns in the mid-twentieth century, and Littlejohn is injected with humour, intelligence and compassion.
Bellairs died on the Isle of Man in April 1982 just before his eightieth birthday.
