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Answer Came There None
Sara Marriott looks forward to a pleasantly productive stay in the small town where she has come to ghostwrite the memoirs of a well-known general. Recently divorced, she is pleased to find lodging in the home of Althea Cannon, a local widow and longtime friend of General Schofield.
Then Sara's attention is abruptly and terribly refocused from past to present by the sudden death of her elderly landlady. When poison is found to be the cause, suicide is the most comfortable assumption, but circumstances suggest otherwise. Disclosures about the dead woman's plans to change her will cast suspicion on her intriguing family.
Becoming embroiled in the problems of Mrs. Cannon's almost disinherited son, her unhappily married sculptress niece, and a pair of precocious children, Sara is haunted by an inexplicable message left on her answerphone only shortly before the violent death. Before she can make sense of the connection between the message and the murder, a second death strikes unnervingly close.
Sara can no longer trust any of her new acquaintances, not even the appealing young man who teaches school and writes mystery novels. But it takes yet another murder before Sara fully understands just how much danger can be stored in an answering machine.
Then Sara's attention is abruptly and terribly refocused from past to present by the sudden death of her elderly landlady. When poison is found to be the cause, suicide is the most comfortable assumption, but circumstances suggest otherwise. Disclosures about the dead woman's plans to change her will cast suspicion on her intriguing family.
Becoming embroiled in the problems of Mrs. Cannon's almost disinherited son, her unhappily married sculptress niece, and a pair of precocious children, Sara is haunted by an inexplicable message left on her answerphone only shortly before the violent death. Before she can make sense of the connection between the message and the murder, a second death strikes unnervingly close.
Sara can no longer trust any of her new acquaintances, not even the appealing young man who teaches school and writes mystery novels. But it takes yet another murder before Sara fully understands just how much danger can be stored in an answering machine.
- GenresMystery
188 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1992
About the author
Elizabeth Ferrars
92 books28 followersAka E.X. Ferrars.
Born Morna Doris McTaggart in Rangoon, Burma of a Scottish father and an Irish-German mother, she grew up in England where she moved at age six. She attended Bedales school and then took a diploma in journalism at London University.
Her first two novels, 'Turn Single' (1932) and 'Broken Music' (1934), came out under her own name, Morna McTaggart. In the early 1930s she married her first husband but she left him, moved to Belsize Park in London and lived with Dr Robert Brown, a lecturer in botany at Bedford College in 1942. She eventually divorced her first husband in October 1945 and married Dr, later Professor, Brown.
It was in 1940 that her first crime novel 'Give a Corpse a Bad Name' was published under the pseudonymn that she had adopted, Elizabeth (sometimes Elizabeth X. - particularly in the USA) Ferrars, the Ferrars her mother's maiden name. This novel featured her young detective Toby Dyke, who was to feature in four other of her novels.
When her husband was offered a post at Cornell University in the USA, the couple moved there but remained only a year before returning to Britain. They travelled with her husband's work, on one occasion visiting Adelaide when he was a visiting professor at the University of South Australia, and later moved to Edinburgh where her husband was appointed Regius Professor of Botany and they lived in the city until 1977 when, on her husband's retirement, they moved to Blewsbury in Oxfordshire where they lived until her sudden death in 1995.
She continued to write a crime novel almost every year and in 1953 she was a founding member of the Crime Writers' Association of which she later became chairperson in 1977.
As well as her short series of works featuring Toby Dyke, she wrote a series featuring retired botanist Andrew Basnett and another series featuring a semi-estranged married couple, Virginia and Felix Freer. All in all she wrote over seventy novels, her final one 'A Thief in the Night' being published posthumously.
Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor described her as having "a sound enough grasp of motives and human relations and a due regard for probability and technique, but whose people and plot are so standard".
Gerry Wolstenholme
November 2010
Born Morna Doris McTaggart in Rangoon, Burma of a Scottish father and an Irish-German mother, she grew up in England where she moved at age six. She attended Bedales school and then took a diploma in journalism at London University.
Her first two novels, 'Turn Single' (1932) and 'Broken Music' (1934), came out under her own name, Morna McTaggart. In the early 1930s she married her first husband but she left him, moved to Belsize Park in London and lived with Dr Robert Brown, a lecturer in botany at Bedford College in 1942. She eventually divorced her first husband in October 1945 and married Dr, later Professor, Brown.
It was in 1940 that her first crime novel 'Give a Corpse a Bad Name' was published under the pseudonymn that she had adopted, Elizabeth (sometimes Elizabeth X. - particularly in the USA) Ferrars, the Ferrars her mother's maiden name. This novel featured her young detective Toby Dyke, who was to feature in four other of her novels.
When her husband was offered a post at Cornell University in the USA, the couple moved there but remained only a year before returning to Britain. They travelled with her husband's work, on one occasion visiting Adelaide when he was a visiting professor at the University of South Australia, and later moved to Edinburgh where her husband was appointed Regius Professor of Botany and they lived in the city until 1977 when, on her husband's retirement, they moved to Blewsbury in Oxfordshire where they lived until her sudden death in 1995.
She continued to write a crime novel almost every year and in 1953 she was a founding member of the Crime Writers' Association of which she later became chairperson in 1977.
As well as her short series of works featuring Toby Dyke, she wrote a series featuring retired botanist Andrew Basnett and another series featuring a semi-estranged married couple, Virginia and Felix Freer. All in all she wrote over seventy novels, her final one 'A Thief in the Night' being published posthumously.
Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor described her as having "a sound enough grasp of motives and human relations and a due regard for probability and technique, but whose people and plot are so standard".
Gerry Wolstenholme
November 2010
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 31, 2014
Sara Marriott doesn't want to get involved with Mrs. Cannon's family. She's happily ensconced in Mrs. Cannon's upstairs flat while she helps General Schofield work on his memoirs, gradually getting over her unpleasant divorce. But when she's invited to Mrs. Cannon's eightieth birthday party, she gets to meet all her friends and relatives, and is also present when Mrs. Cannon is found dead.
May 18, 2026
Starts off quite promisingly, with an engaging protagonist writer and the retired general whose memoir she's been commissioned to ghostwrite. Things continue well with the very beginnings of a relationship with her basement neighbor. And then: the answering machine. Proceedings get bogged down upon the introduction of a mysterious message left... for who and by who and by what manner. Even as someone who grew up in the era of answering machines, it's a lot to try to care about, and unfortunately in this case, this prominent mechanic distracts one from what should be the larger mysteries of who is the poisoner and who is the stabber (not to mention a third last-minute "oh yeah this person got it too". There are of course complicating factors like wills and secret love affairs, but those ingredients have been treated more effectively in other Ferrars novels. This one unfortunately doesn't measure up to the works of Mr. Graham Greene, forever left on the floor next to the corpse in this one. Lovely understated last line in the book, though, at least: "There are events in the lives of every one of us of which we do not wish to possess a constant reminder."
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews