Pel and the Missing Persons - Hardcover

John Harris, who also wrote under the pen names of 'Mark Hebden' and 'Max Hennessy', was born in 1916. He authored the best-selling and later filmed 'The Sea Shall Not Have Them', a story of survival and rescue from World War II which continues to be periodically screened on TV. He was a sailor, an airman, a journalist, a travel courier, a cartoonist and a history teacher. During the War Harris managed to serve with two air forces and two navies. After turning to full-time writing, he wrote adventure stories, war novels, political thrillers, and also created a sequence of crime novels around the quirky French Chief Inspector Pel, centred primarily in Burgundy, but occasionally Paris and elsewhere. Harris was unusually versatile and wide ranging as an author. Epics such as 'China Seas', which deals with human tragedy, war and revolution in an authentic historical setting, and the three trilogies written under the pseudonym Max Hennessy - one of which, the Kelly Maguire series commencing with 'Lion at Sea' is reckoned to be amongst the finest modern war-at-sea stories written - along with African adventure novels, wide-ranging crime, mysteries and historical fiction, all guarantee a whole library of diverse and entertaining reading full of dry wit and gripping prose.

Bad humor is raised to a fine art by French Chief Inspector Pel, who in more than a dozen books ( Pel and the Party Spirit ) has shown a liking only for his rich wife, Gauloises and anything Burgundian--to him, Burgundy "wasn't a province of France, it was a religion." Now Pel is unhappy about a series of daring robberies by a motorized gun-toting gang, about losing some of his staff (reassigned due to a rise in the number of missing persons) and about an old man found dead, apparently a hit-and-run victim. Who is the old man? And why, among other anomalies, was there no blood at the scene? Pel and his loyal aides--aristocratic DeTroq', handsome Darcy et al.--manage to answer all questions in a tale involving decades-old blackmail, murder and greed. Procedural aspects are handled as superbly as ever, although sharp-eyed readers may spot a crucial murder clue before Pel does. Fans will be pleased, especially with the ongoing feud between Pel and his equally irascible cook, Mme. Routy, whose swap of insults at the door is "another little daily ceremony taken care of."
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.