A review of Surfeit of Suspects by George Bellairs – 240522
A feature of 1960s municipal life, brought into the spotlight by the likes of Private Eye, was corruption and shady dealings, especially around the subject of planning applications. Many a small fortune was made by speculating on land for which planning permission was imminent, making access to inside knowledge worth its weight in gold. George Bellairs’ long-running series sleuth, Thomas Littlejohn, unearths an early example in Surfeit of Suspects, originally published in 1964 and reissued as part of the British Library Crime Classics series.
Bellairs’ own experience as a banker comes into its own in this tale of financial shenanigans and skullduggery which opens in explosive fashion. Three of the five directors of the Excelsior Joinery company are killed when there is a massive explosion in the administrative unit after hours, while the three were holding an unofficial meeting. The company was in financial difficulties and this could have been a ham-fisted attempt to obtain an insurance payout. But why time the explosion for when there were people in the office? Or was it a targeted attempt to murder one or more of the directors and, if so, why?
Of the three victims, John Willie Dodd, Dick Fallows, and John Willie Piper, Dodd was the dominant character, in charge of the company’s finances and the one responsible for persuading his fellow directors to sink their money into a company that was already failing. He was also a womanizer, having an affair with the wife of one of the surviving two directors, Fred Hoop, who, along with his father, Tom, was conspicuously absent from the meeting. Tom, though, was in bed ill and quickly dies while Fred has a cast-iron alibi as he was out visiting his wife at the time of the explosion.
Littlejohn is a meticulous, thorough, unexciting detective and much of the book is a police procedural, full of interviews and investigations from which the reader learns more information about the situation of the company. Bellairs leads his reader gently through a maze of characters, teasing out their interrelationships and possible motivations for wanting to commit murder. And along the way we meet some intriguing characters including a disillusioned bank manager who went out on a limb to lend the Excelsior money, unlikely now to be recovered save for a policy taken out on Dodd’s life for the outstanding amount. Then there is Bugler, the company cashier, who has a gambling addiction and is in debt to his bookmaker brother-in-law. And where does the bumptious and unpleasant councillor, Vintner, fit into it all?
There is a quarry nearby and four sticks of dynamite recently went missing, two of which were used on an abortive raid on the local bank’s safe. As Littlejohn investigates how the dynamite was obtained, he realizes that there are close links between the quarry’s directors and some of the characters under investigation for the explosion and allows him to narrow down his surfeit of suspects. Rather like Poirot he gathers all the prime suspects together to reveal his reconstruction of events and who the murderer was.
Ultimately, this is a case of double-dealing, both in personal and business relationships and a father’s overwhelming desire to protect his child. Although Bellairs presents us with a surfeit of suspects, the real culprit is not difficult to discern. Whilst it does not maintain the heights of its opening, it is an engaging and enjoyable story which lifts an early lid on the sort of municipal chicanery that was to become a feature of the next decade.
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