The Original Inspector George Gently Collection: Gently does it & gently by the shore

This first volume of the Inspector George Gently Collection comprises the original two novels that established Gently as one of Scotland Yard's fictional finest.

These are the stories on which the hit BBC TV series was based, written with a charm that conveys Alan Hunter's love of the East Anglian setting and demonstrating his expert use of dialogue to keep the plot moving along at a cracking pace.

The first of Gently's cases, Gently Does It, has him enduring the holiday from hell when he is caught up in a mysterious murder and locks horns with the local police over their handling of the affair. In the second book, Gently By The Shore, other people's holidays are disturbed when Gently is called in to investigate the discovery of a body on a pleasure beach.

Alan Hunter was born in Hoveton, Norfolk in 1922. He left school at the age of 14 to work on his father's farm, spending his spare time sailing on the Norfolk Broads and writing nature notes for the Eastern Evening News. He also wrote poetry, some of which was published while he was in the RAF during World War II. By 1950, he was running his own book shop in Norwich and in 1955, he wrote the first of 45 George Gently novels. He died in 2005 aged 82.