What do you think?
Rate this book
Superintendent Ditteridge #2
Breath of Suspicion
'I do like you,' the girl said. 'I like you enormously. We've never had anyone else come in here and tell us anything like this.'
The story that Richard Hedon had told her and the man who was calling himself Gavin Chilmark concerned a man named Paul Clyro, a scientist who has worked with another, named Wolsingham, at a research station in Sutherland, where they had been doing very secret work on viruses. But the security people had been closing in on Wolsingham, and he had known it, and one day he had taken his life in his laboratory by swallowing potassium cyanide.
'All that,' Richard said, 'got into the newspapers.'
Was it imagination that the face of the man before him had grown a little tauter than before?
Richard went on, 'Paul Clyro found the body. It must have been a fearful shock. Not just the shock of walking in on a corpse, but of discovering the kind of man he'd venerated, and being questioned and investigated and suspected himself. So it would seem he was driven half-mad, because one day he walked out of his house, leaving his wife expecting him home to lunch, and he's never been seen from that day to this.'
'But what put you onto the idea that I might be Clyro?' asked the man known as Gavin Chilmark, whose two-year-old trail Richard had followed to a sunny villa in Madeira, where the man was living a comfortable and contented life, free of any breath of suspicion...
The story that Richard Hedon had told her and the man who was calling himself Gavin Chilmark concerned a man named Paul Clyro, a scientist who has worked with another, named Wolsingham, at a research station in Sutherland, where they had been doing very secret work on viruses. But the security people had been closing in on Wolsingham, and he had known it, and one day he had taken his life in his laboratory by swallowing potassium cyanide.
'All that,' Richard said, 'got into the newspapers.'
Was it imagination that the face of the man before him had grown a little tauter than before?
Richard went on, 'Paul Clyro found the body. It must have been a fearful shock. Not just the shock of walking in on a corpse, but of discovering the kind of man he'd venerated, and being questioned and investigated and suspected himself. So it would seem he was driven half-mad, because one day he walked out of his house, leaving his wife expecting him home to lunch, and he's never been seen from that day to this.'
'But what put you onto the idea that I might be Clyro?' asked the man known as Gavin Chilmark, whose two-year-old trail Richard had followed to a sunny villa in Madeira, where the man was living a comfortable and contented life, free of any breath of suspicion...
191 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1972
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
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 13, 2020
Quiet bookstore owner Richard thinks he's falling in love with Hazel, who still doesn't know what happened to the husband who disappeared without a trace several years ago. Richard goes to Madeira because Hazel thinks that an author living there may be her husband Paul, living under an assumed name. But as complicated as this is, things are always more complicated in Ferrars' books, as she shows the various levels of betrayal.
July 11, 2020
For my full review click on the link below:
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress...
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress...
June 30, 2024
Found in a pile of slim little Elizabeth Ferrars books at a Salvos store in Stones Corner a few months back, I bought the whole stack because I liked the look and I’d never heard of her. I love how short the book is, and how it has the feel of the last phase of a Golden Age mystery to it. My copy is falling apart, all the pages loose from their old 1974 Penguin Crime glue. I had to read it delicately.
It’s the early 70s, London is a comfortable place to live and run an antiquarian bookshop, old friends invite you to parties and introduce you to interesting people, the telephone is still quite a technological invention. In brief, colourful strokes Ferrars paints a picture of a man’s life, and how it can be upturned by a mysterious, appealing woman with a dark past. I’m quite impressed with the overall effect of the book - something like a good episode of an old British crime show - and I enjoyed the reveal plenty. Nothing astonishing, but nothing to sneeze at either.
It’s the early 70s, London is a comfortable place to live and run an antiquarian bookshop, old friends invite you to parties and introduce you to interesting people, the telephone is still quite a technological invention. In brief, colourful strokes Ferrars paints a picture of a man’s life, and how it can be upturned by a mysterious, appealing woman with a dark past. I’m quite impressed with the overall effect of the book - something like a good episode of an old British crime show - and I enjoyed the reveal plenty. Nothing astonishing, but nothing to sneeze at either.
December 31, 2019
As always, what I love about Ferrars is the sense of timelessness to her plots. I'm beginning to see aspects in some of her novels that I don't care too much for, but I read her for the tone, the atmosphere, the relationship between the characters. I like the beginnings of her novels--the mystery is good and interesting. Resolutions, not so much. And that is fine.
August 2, 2022
First time reading this author. A curious style and there's more going on between characters than many novels so the relationships are quite fluid. Ferrars leads you down a narrowing path until you reach your conclusion. But he brings in a small mention from earlier and honestly and fairly provides the true solution. Well done.
December 17, 2023
I really enjoy Elizabeth Ferrar books! This one had interesting English characters, a trip to Madeira, quite a bit of period detail, and a complicated clever plot.
February 1, 2015
"She was a perfect representative of what is known in the United States as a writer of 'cosy' mysteries: detective stories that purely entertain, with an involving puzzle solved by reasonably lifelike characters, and do not overly challenge the 'status quo' or perhaps (more crucially) threaten the average reader's susceptibilities." from Ms Ferrars' obituary in The Independent, Wednesday 19 April 1995
I couldn't really come up with a quote from this book since I listened to it and there are no paper copies in my library. However, I think this description of Ferrars' novels is a perfect description of how Breath of Suspicion works. Richard Hedon, the main character discovers a problem, he attempts to solve it the easy way and then figures out what really has gone wrong.
The plot is simple and the solution is practically tied up with a ribbon at the end of the story. I was entertained while listening, but I am not going to remember the characters in this book for very long. Like a decent piece of candy, it was good while it lasted, but I am going to want another one.
I knew all this when I picked up this audiobook. I wanted something short that would tide me over until I figured out what next to listen to. During the holidays I did not want anything that required too much attention. A bonus was that the reader was excellent. I may try to find something else read by Nigel Graham
I recommend this audiobook to cosy mystery lovers and to any reader who might want to visit the Cold War era when the only bad guys were the Russians.
I couldn't really come up with a quote from this book since I listened to it and there are no paper copies in my library. However, I think this description of Ferrars' novels is a perfect description of how Breath of Suspicion works. Richard Hedon, the main character discovers a problem, he attempts to solve it the easy way and then figures out what really has gone wrong.
The plot is simple and the solution is practically tied up with a ribbon at the end of the story. I was entertained while listening, but I am not going to remember the characters in this book for very long. Like a decent piece of candy, it was good while it lasted, but I am going to want another one.
I knew all this when I picked up this audiobook. I wanted something short that would tide me over until I figured out what next to listen to. During the holidays I did not want anything that required too much attention. A bonus was that the reader was excellent. I may try to find something else read by Nigel Graham
I recommend this audiobook to cosy mystery lovers and to any reader who might want to visit the Cold War era when the only bad guys were the Russians.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews