George Bellairs was the pseudonym of Harold Blundell (1902-1982), a Manchester bank manager as well as a freelance journalist. He published 57 popular classic police procedurals featuring Inspector Thomas Littlejohn of Scotland Yard between 1941 and 1980. He also wrote four mysteries using the name Hilary Landon.
In Crime in Lepers’ Hollow (John Gifford, 1952), the eighteenth appearance of Inspector Littlejohn, he and his wife are spending the Christmas holidays in Oddington, Gloucestershire, with a former colleague who now runs an inn. His time off is cancelled when two murders in quick succession take place at an old manor house nearby, currently occupied by an eccentric and troubled family, and the local Chief Constable calls Scotland Yard in to assist, much to the annoyance of the local police.
The first victim Dulcie Crake was a volatile woman with multiple love interests, regardless of her patient husband and the talk her goings-on caused. Her adult daughter disliked her and her grown son was unusually dependent on her. Her peculiar brother lived with them and was absorbed by his dubious scientific studies. Their only servant had been with the family for decades and was given to oracular pronouncements. Her husband Nicholas Crake was a local judge and he died of pneumonia only days before she was stabbed; ugly rumors suggested that she hastened his death. Littlejohn and Sergeant Cromwell chatted up the village residents, collecting all the gossip about the family and the dead woman’s associates as well as attempting to validate the alibis they had been given. One of the suspects was killed a few days later in what seemed to be an impossible window of time.
Bellairs specialized in placing the urbanite Littlejohn in small out-of-the-way villages where time stood still and the habits and conventions of years gone by continued to hold sway. His perennial sidekick Cromwell has some amusing scenes with individual residents of the village to provide some humor to a tense and perplexing case. A case is made for one after another of the possible killers, only to have each case fall apart until the very end. Bellairs had great skill in plotting and creative characterization, and it shows in this good series entry.
While the action here begins at Christmas, there really isn’t much about the season in the story. Anyone looking for a Christmassy mystery should look elsewhere.