George Bellairs - A Surfeit of Suspects - Charnwood - 2022
2022 reprint of book first published in 1964
George Bellairs was a pseudonym used by Harold Blundell (1902-1982)
Harold Blundell aka George Bellairs was never a professional writer despite having 58 novels and a number of articles published. Instead he stayed in his post as bank manager in Rochdale and pursued writing as a paying hobby.
It's often said that many writers of classic detective fiction treated their stories as a kind of puzzle to be solved, and often seemed set in a kind of hermetically-sealed bubble, divorced from most people's reality.
This story is nothing like that, with much of the plot centring around a joinery business in the fictitious manufacturing town of Evingdon which has been hovering on the brink of bankruptcy for some time.
The author makes great play of the contrast between the expanding new town and the less salubrious old town with it's inadequately lighted streets and rows of terraced houses.
He also draws on his experience in banking to set out the elaborate scam run by one group of characters, with one company belonging to another company which in turn belongs to yet another as they try to hide the identity of those in charge.
Style-wise, George Bellairs is usually regarded as an unpretentious writer of rather low-key novels, probably to be found at the lighter end of the crime fiction spectrum.
I'd agree that Surfeit of Suspects is an easy read, but on this showing, it would be a mistake to underestimate this author.
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