Mon 16 Nov 2009
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: E. X. FERRARS – Murder of a Suicide.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[5] Comments
William F. Deeck
E. X. FERRARS – Murder of a Suicide. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1941. Paperback reprint: Curtis Books, no date. British edition: Hodder & Stoughton, 1941, as Death in Botanist’s Bay, as by Elizabeth Ferrars (her standard byline in the UK).
Edgar Prees, director of the Botanical Gardens In Asslington, is a man of such regular habits that when he is two hours late coming home one evening his daughter becomes quite alarmed. And rightly so, for Prees has, or so It seems, tried to commit suicide by trying to throw himself off a cliff.
He is stopped, but the next morning, even as he still seems to be thinking about killing himself, he is murdered. Or does he kill himself?
Officially, Inspector Tingey investigates. Tingey “liked simple virtues and was sympathetic to a few simple vices. He liked to be thought a simple man who believed what people told him.”
Unofficially, Toby Dyke and his rather odd companion George, of apparently fixed abode but no last name, both of whom had aided in keeping Prees from hurling himself off the cliff, try to help Prees’s daughter, who is a possible suspect.
Most of the characters, with the possible exception of Prees’s neurotic former secretary, are believable, including Gerald Hyland, an author who achieves a reasonable Income by writing about “sex and religion in the desert” and who is the complete faddist.
There are wheels within wheels here. A plausible solution is offered at the end, and then it is overridden by an even more plausible solution.
For reasons that I cannot recall, I had thought that Ferrars was essentially a suspense writer. This, however, is a fair-play mystery.
Bibliographic Data: I believe Bill Deeck’s assertion to be correct. Between 1940 and 1995 E. X. Ferrars wrote over 70 detective and mystery novels or story collections, and my impression is also that those written toward the end of her career were more inclined to be romantic suspense in nature than they were “traditional” detective fiction.
But in each of the first five books she wrote, her leading character was the same Toby Dyke as in Murder of a Suicide; and I have a strong feeling that in these books, as was common for most detective fiction in the early 1940s, “fair play” deduction was the order of the day.
TOBY DYKE. [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin] —
Give a Corpse a Bad Name (n.) Hodder 1940. [No US edition.]
Remove the Bodies (n.) Hodder 1940. [US title: Rehearsals for Murder, Doubleday, 1941.
Death in Botanist’s Bay (n.) Hodder 1941. [US title: Murder of a Suicide, Doubleday, 1941]
Don’t Monkey with Murder (n.) Hodder 1942 [US title: The Shape of a Stain, Doubleday, 1942]
Your Neck in a Noose (n.) Hodder 1942. [US title: Neck in a Noose, Doubleday, 1943]
November 16th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Ferrars is one of those writers who never really got her due this side of the Pond. I’m not a big fan, but she was usually reliable and literate — neither to be sneezed at today. Off hand I can think of about a dozen Brit writers who fall into the same general category of being under-appreciated or known here ranging from fair play tec and suspense writers like Mary Kelly to tough cop stuff by John Wainwright or Troy Kennedy Martin.
November 16th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
I wouldn’t say Ferrars was ever really a “suspense” writer (some of her late sixties-early seventies books were marketed as Gothics in paperback editions, but that was during the Gothics craze, when publishers were trying to make every books written by a woman look Gothic–“the latest in Gothic suspense from….Patricia Highsmith??? okay, just kidding).
Her early, Toby Dyke tales were in the Lord Peter gent tec mold. I think two or three of these are quite good. She moved into the domestic mystery field after that, what one reviewer called country cottage mysteries (as opposed to country house). There is a lot more emphasis on people’s (particularly the usually female protagonist’s) feelings about the crime then in classical GAD, but most of the books seem to me to stay within the bounds of detection.
In the 1980s and 90s she even had two different series detective, Felix Freer and Andrew Basnett.
Symons reprinted her Enough to Kill a Horse from the 50s in his Collins reprint series, and it’s quite good, actually. She wrote way too much, but there are some worthwhile books in there.
November 16th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
I wouldn’t mind being corrected if Ferrars never became a “suspense writer,” if she didn’t. At the moment I’ve mentally put her in the same general category as Mignon Eberhart, to pick the first example that comes to mind, but Curt, the point you made about those later series characters she came up with is well-taken.
I would like to think that she got her due on this side of the Atlantic, David. After all most of those 70 books were published over here, and that’s a heck of a lot of readers.
She’s forgotten now, of course, and I imagine Mignon Eberhart is also. I read a few of Ferrars’ later books, but I have to confess that none of the story lines have stuck with me.
Next best thing: a couple of Ferrars’ reviews coming up from 1001 MIDNIGHTS.
(And to those of you who remember I said the same thing about Cornell Woolrich a while ago, I haven’t forgotten either. Other things came along, and I will get to them!)
— Steve
November 16th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
I will agree Ferrars did better here than many, but still she is one of many Brit writers who somehow never really caught on for whatever reason. Wainwright was reprinted here in paperback too, as were Maurice Procter, Mary Kelly, Gladys Mitchell, and many others, but for whatever reason they either didn’t catch on or get the proper promotion they might have deserved.
It may just be a cultural thing. It’s amazing how few Canadian writers are known here, much less Brits. I don’t know if we are all that insular or it is just the publishing business.
Not that I want to see American writers crowded out, but ideally quality would trump nationality — especially in books in English. It’s not like British mysteries are exactly an exotic product on American bookshelves.
November 17th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
I believe most of Ferrars’ book were reprinted here, though, and you could find lots of her titles in American libraries in the 1990s.
With her death, she seems to have faded out, but then that happens to most writers, doesn’t it?
I’d say on the suspense issue, Eberhart goes a few notches higher on the anxiety scale than Ferrars. Though even Eberhart I would still classify as a detective novelist, though she’s pushing it with all the anxiety and love interest. My reading of Eberhart, however, is primarily confined to the 1930s.