Wed 17 Nov 2010
Reviewed by Curt Evans: ELIZABETH FERRARS – Give a Corpse a Bad Name.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[3] Comments
ELIZABETH FERRARS – Give a Corpse a Bad Name. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1940. Collins Crime Club, UK, hc, 1981. Chivers, UK, large print edn, 2000. No US edition.
Like Christianna Brand, the prolific, long-lived mystery doyenne Elizabeth Ferrars (1907-1995) slipped into print at the tail end of the Golden Age of British mystery (roughly 1920 to 1940); and, like Brand, upon her appearance in the detection field, she was raved as part of the “literary” school of British women mystery writers following Crime Queen’s Dorothy L. Sayers’ injunction to transmute detective novels into novels of manners with a crime interest.
Ferrars went so far as to use a Lord Peterish, Campionite series detective in her first five books, one Toby Dyke, who comes complete with a Bunterish, Luggite assistant, one George (no last name — George is wary about giving out personal details). Though Toby is no aristocrat, he is an winning gent; and George seems to have picked up quite a bit of knowledge of crime and criminals at some point in his life.
I have read three of the later four titles in the series and thought the last, Neck in a Noose, the best, with the other two getting bogged down in messy plots. Give a Corpse a Bad Name, however, struck me as very good, with a particularly ingenious, twisting finish.
In the English village of Chovey, the charming, youngish widow Anna Milne (formerly of South Africa but now residing at one of Chovey’s most desirable residences, “The Laurels”), reports to the police that she has run down and killed a man. Oddly, the dead man also comes from South Africa and has Anna Milne’s address in his pocket, yet Anna Milne claims not to recognize him.
Since the man had been drinking heavily before the fatal accident and she herself had not, no legal culpability is attached to Mrs. Milne. But then anonymous letters begin appearing, suggesting that this “accident” was no accident….
Soon former crime reporter Toby Dyke and his mysterious yet amiable friend George are investigating, with surprising results. And George proves no slouch himself as an “amateur” detective in the end.
Give a Corpse a Bad Name is an enjoyable book, with sufficient, sometimes strong, characterization, good writing and an interesting puzzle with some coherent cluing. Toby and George remain more nebulous than Peter and Bunter and Campion and Lugg, yet they do have some nice moments, such as George’s lecture to Tony on the merits of barley sugar.
Definitely worth reading, though the original edition, printed only in Britain by Hodder and Stoughton, is very rare and very expensive. Fortunately it was reprinted in hardcover by Collins in 1981 and also a new press, Langtail, appears to have reprinted it in paperback just this year.
Some Brief Bio-Bibliographic Bits:
The Toby Dyke mysteries: [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]
Give a Corpse a Bad Name (n.) Hodder 1940.
Remove the Bodies (n.) Hodder 1940. Doubleday, 1941, as Rehearsals for Murder.
Death in Botanist’s Bay (n.) Hodder 1941. Doubleday, 1941, as Murder of a Suicide.
Don’t Monkey with Murder (n.) Hodder 1942. Doubleday, 1942, as The Shape of a Stain.
Your Neck in a Noose (n.) Hodder 1942. Doubleday, 1943, as Neck in a Noose.
Note: Both Elizabeth Ferrars and E. X. Ferrars, her byline in the US, were pen names of Morna Doris Brown, 1907-1995. A long obituary for her by Jack Adrian can be found online.
Editorial Comment: I have found no website for Langtail Press, but there is a list of their forthcoming mysteries, all softcover reprints, on Amazon UK, with almost 50 titles scheduled for release on December 1st. The books are uniformly priced at 12 pounds; other authors include Anthony Berkeley, Freeman Wills Crofts, Fredric Brown, Gavin Black and John Dickson Carr.
November 17th, 2010 at 11:27 pm
Ferrars was an excellent writer, but none of the books really stick out in my memory. I remember them as literate and competent, even clever, but plots and characters elude me and in the end my impression was of reliable mysteries that in the end were disposable — which I suspect is very unfair to her considering the length and quality of her work.
Maybe it’s just me and I never read that one work that caught and held me.
November 18th, 2010 at 12:49 am
Some of what you say, which I agree with, may have been due to the fact that Ferrars never came up with any series characters that were anything more than bland. Clever plots, but nothing else to hang one’s hat on.
She wrote five Supt. Ditteridege mysteries in the 1970s, for example, and later than those, eight with Virginia Freer, some of which I’ve read, and another eight with Andrew Basnett, also toward the end of her writing career.
I’ve always been interested in knowing more about her Toby Dyke books, though, and I have all but the first one. Never read one, though, and Curt, your review has more than satisfied my curiosity — and I may even read one. The puzzle and the cluing you talk about are pretty good hooks, as far as I’m concerned.
November 18th, 2010 at 4:24 am
I think that’s a very good point about the absence of a series detective in much of her work. What surprised me, however, is how much those early Toby Dykes fit into the classical mold, complete with gent detective and sidekick. Though Ferrars has some fun with the convention by making the sidekick a pretty perspicacious fellow!
I think several are worth revisiting for readers who like Sayers, Allingham and Marsh. Later Ferrars books often fit into the mold of the “cozy” English village mystery, yet they do tend to run together in one’s mind. Enough to Kill a Horse often is cited as notable among them, fairly enough. It has a good plot and places more emphasis on the emotional states of the characters whose lives are impacted by the murder, in the manner of a Rendell or James. Murders Anonymous is a good one from the 1970s.
Ferrars’ work hasn’t done that well since her death, probably because the plotting isn’t as strong as Christie’s and the writing is not as penetrating as Rendell’s or James’. The same fate seems to have befallen Margaret Yorke since she stopped writing about a decade ago.