I, Said the Fly

by Elizabeth Ferrars

One day in the spring of 1941, Kay Bryant walked along a bombed London street in which she had rented a room before the war. She had come to see what the blitz had done to Little Carberry Street, and now that No. 10 had vanished completely, there was a chance she might be able to forget some of the horror associated with the house, and at last blot out its grim memories of murder. It all began when a gun was found hidden under the floorboards - a gun which had been used in the murder of the room's previous occupant. The police were convinced that the murderer would be found among the inhabitants of No. 10, yet to Kay this seemed impossible, for all of them were her friends. At the time, each of them appeared to think it was someone else, and there was a case for any of them to have done it. But one of them knew too much, and a further death took place. In present day, reunited with Inspector Cory among the ruins, Kay vividly relived those days of suspicion. For she knew one thing the other tenants didn't. Did Inspector Cory know it too?

Genres: Mystery

Audio Cassette

First published January 1, 1945

About the author

Aka 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

Reviews

[Andrea]

The former resident of the room next door of a woman living in bohemian surroundings is murdered. The gun is discovered on the premises. The residents of the boarding house are the prime suspects.

Some annoying deliberate non-disclosure by POV character, but otherwise very readable.

I enjoyed this more than my first Ferrars outing, but it still didn't grab me strongly enough to want to do an author glom. May try another of her books at some point in the future.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An early Ferrars places young designer Kay Bryant in a small bed-sit in a slummy area of London. It was a cheap place to live, and she needed something cheap; and her friends Melissa and Ted lived in the same building. It's certainly strange when the gas men find a pistol under the floorboards in the next room, where the new tenant is having a small heater installed. But when the police say that the gun was used to kill a body that they can only then identify as Naomi Smith, who used to live in that room next door to Kay, she knows that there's a good chance that the murderer is living in the same house. The police are convinced that Kay knows more than she's telling--but why wouldn't an innocent woman speak up?

[Dawn Tyers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite a short novel told from the point of view of a boarding house tenant who becomes a suspect in a murder investigation. Some interesting characters, plenty of mis-directions and some notable omissions from the main character’s point of view all keep the suspense going to the end.

[Calum Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

A–

[Gerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in London just before World War II, the occupants of rented accommodation get involved in the death of a former resident. When the murder weapon is discovered on the premises Inspector Cory gets more interested in the residents.

Any one of them could have been responsible and how did the murder weapon get secreted under the floorboards? All is revealed in a mystery that keeps the interest and intrigue through to the end.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my full review click on the link below:
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress...