Cover Image: A Knife for Harry Dodd

A Knife for Harry Dodd

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A Knife for Harry Dodd is another classic Bellairs murder mystery. While the main character is Inspector Littlejohn, for a good bit of the story is involved with his Scotland yard sidekick Superintendent Cromwell. He performs a heavy dose of the investigating but it is Littlejohn who in the end, figures out the culprit and explains the logic he used to reach his conclusion. I think the is one of Bellairs' efforts for his murder mystery series. Thoroughly enjoyable. Like all of Bellairs' novels, it is light without graphic descriptions and the writing is suitable for the younger audience.

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Really enjoyed this book. It kept me interested all the way through. I would definitely recommend to a fellow reader. I like the cover as well.

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From an apparently simple beginning, the stabbing murder of Harry Dodd, Bellairs constructs an increasingly complex tale of secrets and deception.
The reader is repeatedly led to see Harry, his family and associates, from one perspective, only to discover a new set of facts which upend everything. As the plot advances in this shifting ,landscape,
Bellairs’ depiction of character is deft and often scathing. His observations are enhanced both by sharply drawn physical description and dialogue.. interestingly,
Bellairs is something of a moralist, at least he plays favorites among his characters. He obviously dislikes some and is sympathetic towards others, despite their human frailty.
Overall, the book is well constructed and compelling; plot, character and intrigue keep everything moving until the end.

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3.75 stars

I am a fan of vintage mysteries, and Littlejohn's cases are always interesting. They are intelligently written and presume the reader to be paying attention.

In this instance, a family drama unfolds. Harry Dodd has been ostracized from his family (wife and grown children) after having a brief fling with his secretary. He loses everything, and ends up living in a cheap place with the secretary and her mother. Any romantic spark is long gone, and he escapes every evening to the local pub. One dark night he is stabbed on the way home.

When Littlejohn and crew start looking for suspects, layers of intrigue are uncovered. Is there another girlfriend down at the pub? And whose child is her little girl? What about Harry's business ventures? He is working on a secret project that could put his wife's family business in peril. And where did he find the money to make generous gestures to various friends?

More murders follow -- someone has something to hide. Enjoyable as always. Thanks to the publisher and to Net Galley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

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I've struggled dutifully through three Bellairs books, but this is the last. The man can't write. He can't hold a point of view, keep a character consistent or put together a plot that doesn't depend on reversing previously accumulated clues. And some kind friend should have taken the exclamation point off his keyboard.

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A Knife for Harry Dodd begins with a woman receiving a phone call from the man she lives with. After a night at the pub, he has begun to feel ill and needs her to take him home. What might seem like a predictable end to a night out drinking turns into a tragedy when he is found stabbed to death in the street. Harry Dodd is a man that, during what seems to be a midlife crisis, left his devoted wife and comfortable life for his mistress and clearly bitterly regrets it. Inspector Littlejohn is called in to try and make sense of Dodd's complicated life in order to solve the murder.

I found this novel hard work at first. The characters are all rather unpleasant and the story seems to drag on a bit. I will admit that I honestly did not care who killed Harry Dodd! Thankfully it picks up pace as more characters and subplots are introduced. It then becomes a page-turner with plenty of twists and turns and an ending that I did not predict. A Knife for Harry Dodd is far from being a perfect crime novel. One of the main problems for me was the fact that so many of the lower class characters are portrayed as being amoral buffoons. This is quite common with books from this era, but it does come across as being quite condescending. I also felt this humour obscures the fact that this novel does deal with some interesting issues such as infidelity, illegitimacy, thwarted ambitions and family breakdown. I did ultimately enjoy it because the plot is intriguing (I actually ended up staying up till 2 am to finish it). I would recommend this novel if you are already familiar with this series. If you are new to the Inspector Littlejohn novels I would not recommend starting with this one as it is definitely one of the weaker ones.

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I had previously read and enjoyed two George Bellairs’ stories featuring Inspector Littlejohn in the British Library Crime Classics series and was equally delighted with this latest novel – a Knife for Harry Dodd. I would be happy to read more from this author. I was caught up in the story from the very outset and found it well plotted with a satisfying denouement. There was a cast of colourful characters all drawn in a wealth of detail. Mr Glass, one of the patients in the asylum where Harry Dodds’ father had been incarcerated, was particularly interesting I thought. My one doubt was whether the author’s attitude towards women was a bit dated – there was a competent female barrister in Joan Jump but even she – like so many other of the female characters – seemed to burst into tears at the slightest opportunity. This did not however mar my overall enjoyment of the story.

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This is yet another wonderful Golden Age mystery by the prolific George Bellairs. I am really pleased to see these terrific old mysteries being republished for another generation of readers. Bellairs doesn’t need some cutesy theme to make his books appealing. He simply writes excellent mysteries, populated by interesting characters, sprinkled here and there with a bit of humor, and peppered with clues. He often brings things to an unexpected conclusion. I’ve read at least ten of this series and haven’t guessed the ending yet.

Inspector Littlejohn is one of my favorite sleuths. He is wise and perceptive and always calm, no matter what circumstances he finds himself in. In this book, A Knife for Harry Dodd, the plot is complex, and many of the characters are both unpleasant and suspects in the crime. The story might be perceived as moving a bit slowly for modern tastes, but I feel it adds to the sense of time and place. (No computers to quickly find information and even a long distance phone call was a big deal!). The end surprised me a bit, but it was both plausible and consistent with the story.

Highly recommended if you enjoy a classic mystery that is well written and easy to read.

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There is no snoozing through this mystery. There are a host of suspects and contributing characters, none of whom can tell the truth without embellishment or editing. We follow Inspector Littlejohn as he unpeels this onion and on the way grow more and more fond of Harry Dodd. The understated humor and very recognizable British characters make for an enjoyable cozy.

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George Bellairs was a very prolific crime author, with over fifty books published between 1941 and 1980. This is the first one I’ve read and I enjoyed it, which means I have a lot to look forward to! Although Bellairs (a pseudonym of Harold Blundell) did write some standalone novels, most of his books were part of his Inspector Littlejohn series of which A Knife for Harry Dodd is the twenty-first. Fortunately, this is not a series which needs to be read in order!

As the title suggests, the novel begins with Harry Dodd being stabbed in the back as he begins to walk home from his local pub one night. Instead of calling the police or an ambulance, Harry summons his girlfriend Dorothy Nicholls and her mother, who immediately set off in the car – with great difficulty, as neither of them can actually drive. Eventually they manage to find Harry and help him into the car, but they are unaware of how badly wounded he is and by the time they get him home he is dead.

Inspector Littlejohn of Scotland Yard is called in to investigate the crime and, with the help of his assistant Sergeant Cromwell and the local police, he begins to unravel the secrets of Harry Dodd’s personal life in an effort to identify the murderer. At first, Dorothy and her mother are under suspicion, but the range of suspects soon widens to include another of Harry’s mistresses, his estranged wife and their sons and daughters, and his brother, an influential politician. As the story unfolds, we begin to understand what sort of man Harry Dodd was and the nature of his relationships with the various people in his life. It’s not an easy mystery for the reader to solve, as some of the information we need isn’t provided until later in the book, but I enjoyed following Littlejohn’s investigations and trying to guess who the culprit could be.

Although it’s disappointing that most of the women in the book are portrayed as either silly and helpless or loud and domineering, there’s some great characterisation too. I particularly liked Ishmael Lott, a timid little man who sells parrot seed and dreams of making his fortune on the stock market, and Mr Glass, a patient in an asylum that Littlejohn visits in his search for one of the suspects. In fact, Littlejohn himself is probably the least memorable of all the characters in the book! In a way, I liked the fact that he just gets on with solving the mystery unobtrusively, but it would still have been nice to have known a little bit more about him. Maybe his background is given in the earlier novels and Bellairs assumed he didn’t need to tell us again. I will find out when I read more of the Littlejohn books - which I will definitely be doing!

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I am really loving the George Bellairs series. This is yet another very well written story with excellent characters from Harry, whose life has become kind of a shambles, to the poor, bullied Mr. Lott, to the snotty Dodd family, Inspector Littlejohn is now one of my favorites of Scotland Yard. It's one of those stories that make you think "what might have been" had things gone differently. I have to admit that I couldn't figure out who killed poor Mr. Dodd and it was a surprise to me. You can't go wrong giving this little cozy a try.

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Always a good read! George Bellairs is an accomplished writer who crafts fascinating mysteries told in classic style. One of my favorite authors! And this book is a worthy addition to the Inspector Littlejohn series, with a sympathetic murder victim and a twisty plot.

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First published in 1953, A Knife for Harry Dodd is the eighth book in the Inspector Littlejohn Mysteries. One night Dorothy Nicholls and her mother have their evening disturbed by a phone call from Harry Dodd asking to be picked up from the pub. Little do they realise until they bring him home, that Harry had a stab wound in the back, and he is dead by the time they arrive.

Inspector Littlejohn is assigned to the case and he tries to figure out who would want to kill Harry. As the case unravels, we begin to learn more about Harry's life: the jealous lovers, the blackmail and the madness. Every time I think I've guessed what's happened, another curveball is thrown my way. Bellairs created a well-crafted police procedural crime novel with this title and I'm looking forward to reading more Inspector Littlejohn mysteries in future. For someone who's not read much classic crime for a few years, I really enjoyed it

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I’m struggling with how to review this book.

On the one hand, the writing is sharp and engaging, the plot drew me in and kept me reading, there was a strong sense of place which I like in a novel, and there was a fair amount of the dry British humor that I like so much.

But…but…but…

I really struggled with the very “social class-aware” premise of the book – that by running off with his secretary, Dot, the educated company director Harry Dodd had put himself beyond the pale. So far beyond the pale, in fact, that he had become a sort of “in-country” remittance man.

To me there may or may not be things wrong with running off with your secretary, depending on marital status of both, power/wealth difference, age difference or whatever. But violating social class norms is NOT, to me, one of the things wrong with this. And yet the entire plot is based on this premise, and many of the characterizations seem drawn to highlight this.

In a way this was made worse for me by the fact that this title was originally published in the 1950s and appears to be more-or-less contemporaneous. If this had been written today, as a historical mystery, I would have been more comfortable with it, since I could have viewed it as the author’s probably somewhat accurate portrayal of attitudes of the period. However, as I was reading it, I kept thinking that this in fact probably actually represented the author’s views, and that kept intruding on my enjoyment. It’s not that other British mystery authors of the period don’t have similar social-class issues that seem awkward to a reader of today - e.g. the original title of Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None”. It was that in this case, it was so central to the tale that I couldn’t compartmentalize it away while reading.

With that issue (big though it was for me) aside, I did like this enough to try at least one or two other Inspector Littlejohn titles, and hope that this is not a recurring theme for the whole series.

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A Knife for Harry Dodd is the eighth volume in the Inspector Littlejohn series by George Bellairs. First published in 1953, it holds up well. Unlike many “golden age” mysteries, this one had a very credible plot, though at times convoluted. But it all gets straightened out nicely in the end. And as crazy as the beginning sounded, the characters are believable. To say the story starts out interesting is selling it short: Harry Dodd is stabbed in the back on his way home from the pub, but instead of calling for the police, he phones his girlfriend and her mother and tells them to come fetch him. I was immediately hooked, and loved the whole story.
Not having read any of the others in the series, I was a little confused at first about which policeman was the main one to watch. But it centered quickly on Inspector Littlejohn, with some amazing help from Sergeant Cromwell (inevitably referred to by one wag as ‘Oliver’). I’ll be reading more of Inspector Littlejohn.

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A Delicious Dark Mystery with Dashes of Farce

I love the Littlejohn mysteries, but this is the best yet. A confusing series of murders, with even more confusing motives.

As usual in these books, the atmosphere of connected small villages and farms dominates, with delightful local characters with outlandish names for people and ale houses as Inspector Littlejohn and his assistant Cromwell investigate.

This includes visits to an insane asylum and caring about the fate of poor Mr Lott, seller of parrot seed.

I was smiling the entire time.

I have posted on Amazon but do not yet have their link to my review

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I see that "A knife for Harry Dodd" is the 21st in this series of Inspector Littlejohn mysteries by George Bellairs, who has discovered so many ways to be bad and still get published. Bellaires does not let the fact that he has become utterly bored with his recurring characters deter him from plodding (and plotting) on; he has Littlejohn and Cromwell driving back and forth endlessly between small towns, villages and roadside pubs, holding interminable and mostly fruitless conversations, to give the impression of action. Every once in a while he wakes his readers up by having one of his minor characters gratuitously almost gored by a bull, but all the actual murders take place off-screen (so to speak) despite his use of a third-person, all-seeing narrator. This narrator goes behind closed doors to report on hidden conversations but is never there for the kill .
The scenes with the raging bull, the house fire, and a couple of other awkward farcical moments are attempts at tone-lightening humor, but end up jarring the tone of the police procedural because they are unbelievable and do not flow easily from the plot.
Although there are a few interesting and unusual characters (like Ismael Lott), there are inconsistencies within major characters that make them act as puppets chained to the needs of the plot rather than as complex humans who take on a life of their own as the story develops.
One repeated problem that Bellaires should have corrected after 21 novels is his over-explanation of the obvious, like a comedian who is compelled by his insecurities into explaining his jokes after telling them. During one of Littlejohn's conversations, a self-explanatory affectionate gesture by another character has to be explained by the narrator in terms of the inspector's wife's psychology textbook. That had the effect of pouring water on what could have been an effective scene.
I did like the atmosphere and details of rural England in the 1950's but Bellaires doesn't effectively capitalize on an interesting initial situation. He stretches out scenes and conversations with unnecessary and repetitious detail, thus spoiling any mood of suspense which is crucial to the mystery novel.

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This was a great addition to the Chief Inspector Littlejohn series. I think that anyone could read this, whether you have read the other books in the series or not. I hadn't read any of the other books and enjoyed it

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I haven't read George Bellairs until now but I certainly will again. This story moves with a really well- written cast of characters. Inspector Littlejohn is a regular in a long line of books and he puzzles things out by chasing the clues wherever they lead. There is a long, twisted, path of possible people with enough red-herrings to make it very enjoyable. I like the rural England shown in these descriptions written in 1953 and the Pub life in particular. The characters that hang out there...which Bellairs had a talent for developing-give life to this book.

George Bellairs wrote over 50 books in a long career. The writing is reminiscent of the top-notch English mystery writers of the day with plenty of puzzles and not a lot of gore. I am fond of this type of writing and rejoice I have found another of these authors.

I had Bellairs recommended to me on one of the Golden Age Mystery sites and I highly recommend him to you. Harry Dodd has secrets in his life and they may have just gotten him murdered. Five Stars...

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A Knife for Harry Dodd is the 21st (!!!) Inspector Littlejohn mystery by George Bellairs. Originally published in 1953, this reformat and re-release from Agora, out 13th June 2019 is 312 pages and available in ebook and paperback formats.

George Bellairs was a prolific and very readable author. His books are enjoyable with solid characterizations, often droll dialogue and twisty plots. This one is maybe not my absolute favorite of the ones I've read by him, but it's an above average engaging murder mystery.

Harry Dodd is a friendly engaging man with set habits, egalitarian taste in friends, and a complex history. He is stabbed on the way home from the pub and the body count continues from there. Part of the appeal of the Littlejohn mysteries for me are the unerring 'English village' bucolic settings with tension and enmities rife just under the surface. Bellairs was an adept commentator on the human condition and I think the comparison with Simenon's French novels is an apt one.

Five stars, a diverting read, cleverly put together.

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