John Harris (novelist)

He published a series of crime novels featuring the character Inspector Pel, and war books.

Shortly before the Second World War, he and colleague Harold Evans briefly freelanced in Cornwall.

After the war he rejoined the Sheffield Telegraph as a political and comedy cartoonist (his creations included the Calamity Kids and Amateur Archie), and stayed until the mid-1950s when, following the outstanding success of his 1953 novel The Sea Shall Not Have Them—later, in 1954, made into a film of the same name—he became a full-time author.

His first published novel was The Lonely Voyage (1951), and he went on to write more than 80 works of fiction and non-fiction, including Covenant With Death (1961).

As Hebden he published a series of crime novels featuring the character Inspector Pel.