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Drowned Rat
Douglas has returned from Australia to inherit Havershaw House. He has displaced his cousin's family and brought strangers to the village, stirring up trouble. Now someone is trying to kill him.
- GenresMystery
188 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1975
1 person is currently reading
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About the author
Elizabeth Ferrars
113 books27 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 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 19, 2026
Everyone seems to like heir to the lovely estate, newly returned from Australia, except his Australian pal who has followed him to England. But when Douglas is found drowning in his new swimming pool, it is Andie who dives in to save him. When Andie, in his turn, is found dead in the pool, it looks like suicide, as he leaves a letter saying he's killed Douglas, who is very much alive. If Andie wanted Douglas dead, why did he save his life? And who is the other Australian, who has arrived in so timely a fashion in their little village?
March 17, 2026
The valuable house. The questionable inheritance. The pump-fake murder. The questionable suspect-sightings. The cars. It's a Ferrars book.
As the cover and title might have prepared you, this one concerns people getting bonked in the head and (sometimes successfully) drowned. As a standalone book by this author, it's ok, but doesn't hold a candle to her Basnett or Virgina/Felix series entries.
As the cover and title might have prepared you, this one concerns people getting bonked in the head and (sometimes successfully) drowned. As a standalone book by this author, it's ok, but doesn't hold a candle to her Basnett or Virgina/Felix series entries.
December 31, 2019
Another Ferrars, another book that has a sense of timelessness. This one had a better mystery and therefore a better resolution, but I don't read her for the resolutions. Also interesting is that I'm noticing she is really interested in Australia. Hmmm.
April 20, 2015
A very British murder mystery that take place in the country side. People are not what they seem... I was not familiar with this writer, but I would read more. Some of her titles are very funny in that dark English sly kind of way: Enough To Kill A Horse, We Haven't Seen Her Lately, and The Decayed Gentlewoman.
January 9, 2012
Complex English who done it. Just when I thought it was one person it wasn't.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews