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Come And Be Killed
Ex-library copy. Cover bright and clean. Spine slightly cocked. Pages are perfect. Same day shipping.
- GenresMystery
320 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1987
About the author
Elizabeth Ferrars
91 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 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 10, 2014
When Rachel inherits her great-aunt's fortune, the first thing she does is plan a trip to Australia to visit her brother Ian. But Ian isn't at the airport, and when a jet-lagged Rachel reaches his lodgings, he's not there either. Soon Rachel realizes that Ian may not be coming back, and even the police can't give her any hope. The only one she has to trust is a young doctor who thinks that she's suicidal.
August 28, 2016
The f word on page 170. Why do authors do that? I feel suckered when I've read a book almost to the very end and it has been clean with scant mild language then they throw in the f word. That's where I quit.
August 5, 2012
This is a really good mystery set in Australia and in the style of Agatha Christie. A quick and good read.
October 14, 2014
The final solution is somewhat arbitrary but still acceptable. Elizabeth Ferrars' works are really written in plain English, even non-native speakers can enjoy them without referring to dictionaries!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews