When police are sent an anonymous letter that says only "A murder was Committed at Abbot's Caldicott last Friday," they are skeptical at first. Abbot's Caldicott is a small village, murders there are virtually unknown, and anyway nobody seems to be missing. But soon enough, the body of Dr. Beharrell, a local doctor, is discovered in a secret room hidden away in his house in Upper Square, home of the self-styled leaders of the community. And as one of those anonymous letters was sent to the newly-promoted Inspector Littlejohn at Scotland Yard, he is the investigator sent to Abbot's Caldicott to uncover the truth about Dr. Beharrell's death. And the good doctor, it will turn out, was not a very nice person. You'll find the details in Death Sends for the Doctor, a 1957 mystery by George Bellairs, another mid-20th-century British author of a great many mysteries now being revived for a new audience. Death Sends for the Doctor is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.
The murder of Dr. Beharrell shakes the mostly-upper-middle-class residents of the part of Abbot's Caldicott known as Upper Square. It's home to doctors, lawyers, clergymen and such. Could it also be home to a murderer? What possible motive could there be to kill Doctor Beharrell? Not surprisingly, perhaps, it turns out that just about everyone in that section of town has secrets to hide. It will take careful digging on Superintendent Littlejohn's part to reveal which of those secrets was powerful enough to lead to murder.
“George Bellairs” was the pen name of Harold Blundell, a man who spent most of his working life as a bank manager in the English city of Manchester, but who also, over the course of nearly half a century, wrote some fifty entertaining and enjoyable mysteries. His sleuth, Thomas Littlejohn of Scotland Yard is no superhero, just a very competent investigator, with a real knack for asking the right questions of the right people. Littlejohn is another of the detectives of the Golden Age and beyond who are being revived for a new generation of readers. Death Sends for the Doctor is being re-published by Ipso Books. There is a good deal of the police procedural about Death Sends for the Doctor, but it is written with wit and good humor and a great deal of sympathy for many of the suspects. I suspect that many of those Upper Square residents – yes, and some of their neighbors in the lower part of the town – will stay in your memory long after you have finished reading the book. Death Sends for the Doctor is the fourth book I have read by George Bellairs. I recommend both book and author to you.
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