Max Hennessy

The author of over 70 novels, Max Hennessy also found fame with books written under his real name, John Harris, and the pseudonym Mark Hebden, which he used for his popular Inspector Pel series. ...

Named Ernest John Harris when he was born in 1916, Hennessy worked as a reporter for the Rotherham Advertiser and Sheffield Telegraph before a brief spell as a freelancer in Cornwall in the late 1930s. After serving in the Royal Air Force as a corporal attached to the South African Air Force he returned to the Sheffield Telegraph, this time creating political cartoons including the Calamity Kids and Amateur Archie.

A change of career came in 1953 when his third novel, The Sea Shall Not Have Them, achieved widespread success – it was adapted into a film starring Michael Redgrave, Dirk Bogarde and Anthony Steel the following year. The book’s reception prompted Hennessy to write full-time, often creating books rich in drama and involving high-stake missions. He penned more than 70 adventure books over the next four decades, most of which were originally published under the name John Harris.

Hennessy drew on his military background for five trilogies, the earliest of which was the First World War Martin Falconer series for children. This was followed by the Ira Penaluna books, and the adventures of midshipman Kelly McGuire, put into battle during the Gallipoli Campaign, then serving in China and Dunkirk. The later trilogies spanned four generations of the Goff family of cavalrymen, culminating in Josh Goff’s D-Day experience, and the exploits of Dicken Quinney, a heroic RAF pilot in the 1930s.

The character who stayed with Hennessy the longest was curmudgeonly French police inspector Evariste Pel, who debuted in 1979 with Death Set to Music and appeared in a further 16 of his novels. After Hennessy’s death in 1991 his daughter continued the series, retaining the surname he adopted for the books and publishing under the name Juliet Hebden.