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The Cup and the Lip
Why, on a wet and stormy night, did the old and very ill novelist Dan Braile decide to take a walk?
When he doesn't come back his family are at first reluctant to call the police, despite the fact that he had claimed someone was trying to poison him. But they become steadily more tense as the evidence points towards a horrifying conclusion - and under the strain their united front begins to crack . . .
'A consummate professional in clever plotting, characterisation and atmosphere' Washington Post
When he doesn't come back his family are at first reluctant to call the police, despite the fact that he had claimed someone was trying to poison him. But they become steadily more tense as the evidence points towards a horrifying conclusion - and under the strain their united front begins to crack . . .
'A consummate professional in clever plotting, characterisation and atmosphere' Washington Post
- GenresMystery
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
About the author
Elizabeth Ferrars
92 books29 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
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 24, 2024
Title: The Cup and the Lip
Author: Elizabeth Ferrars
Series: N/A
Release Date: 1975
Publisher: HarperCollins
Rating: 4 stars
Favourite character: Peter
Least favourite character: Kate
Mini-Review: Okay so this was amazing as usual. I love Elizabeth Ferrars books, her writing is just... ugh, I love it. My reason for it not being 5 stars is because of the ending. Not the reveal of the whodunnit, that shocked me. No the romance subplot that was never followed through on. I feel cheated.
Fan Cast:
Peter Harkness - Harry Lloyd
Gina Marston - Ellie Bamber
Max Rowley - Tom Burke
Kate Rowley - Olivia Colman
Juliet Weldon - Laura Carmichael
Walter Weldon - Martin Freeman
Helen Braile - Clare Holman
Anna Weinstock - Celia Imrie
Adrian Rolfe - Aaron Taylor-Johnson
Daniel Braile - Bill Nighy
Arthur - Harry Holland
Cliff Paton - Anthony Boyle
Rosie Paton - Simona Brown
Detective Superintendent Crabtree - Alex Price
Author: Elizabeth Ferrars
Series: N/A
Release Date: 1975
Publisher: HarperCollins
Rating: 4 stars
Favourite character: Peter
Least favourite character: Kate
Mini-Review: Okay so this was amazing as usual. I love Elizabeth Ferrars books, her writing is just... ugh, I love it. My reason for it not being 5 stars is because of the ending. Not the reveal of the whodunnit, that shocked me. No the romance subplot that was never followed through on. I feel cheated.
Fan Cast:
Peter Harkness - Harry Lloyd
Gina Marston - Ellie Bamber
Max Rowley - Tom Burke
Kate Rowley - Olivia Colman
Juliet Weldon - Laura Carmichael
Walter Weldon - Martin Freeman
Helen Braile - Clare Holman
Anna Weinstock - Celia Imrie
Adrian Rolfe - Aaron Taylor-Johnson
Daniel Braile - Bill Nighy
Arthur - Harry Holland
Cliff Paton - Anthony Boyle
Rosie Paton - Simona Brown
Detective Superintendent Crabtree - Alex Price
September 27, 2023
an exciting whodunit murder mystery, but unfortunately the ending/solution was unsatisfactory. the writing is not brilliant, but the story is well-paced
November 9, 2012
I've read three other books by Elizabeth Ferrars; Skeleton Staff, The Crime and the Crystal and Murder of a Suicide and for the most part enjoyed them. The Cup and the Lip was also entertaining. It moves along at a nice clip and kept me interested in what was happening.
Author Dan Braile has a number of friends, fellow writers for the most part, up at his home, Gray Gables. He is to take part in a question and answer session with some of his compatriots and the local arts society. But Dan has been ill for awhile and friend Peter is asked to come up from London to replace him in the session. Strangely, Dan thinks he's being poisoned, maybe by one of his visitors so Peter gets involved in that mystery.
After the function, Dan disappears and another acquaintance, Rolfe, shows up. As the group tries to find Dan and wonder whether they should call the police as well, a dead body is discovered.
So there you go, many questions to be answered and they are all explored. Is Dan being poisoned? Is one of his guests the perpetrator? Why would someone want to poison him? Whose body is discovered?
The book keeps you entertained and the ultimate solution was satisfying. I enjoyed. (3 stars)
Author Dan Braile has a number of friends, fellow writers for the most part, up at his home, Gray Gables. He is to take part in a question and answer session with some of his compatriots and the local arts society. But Dan has been ill for awhile and friend Peter is asked to come up from London to replace him in the session. Strangely, Dan thinks he's being poisoned, maybe by one of his visitors so Peter gets involved in that mystery.
After the function, Dan disappears and another acquaintance, Rolfe, shows up. As the group tries to find Dan and wonder whether they should call the police as well, a dead body is discovered.
So there you go, many questions to be answered and they are all explored. Is Dan being poisoned? Is one of his guests the perpetrator? Why would someone want to poison him? Whose body is discovered?
The book keeps you entertained and the ultimate solution was satisfying. I enjoyed. (3 stars)
September 7, 2022
A short and ultimately slight tale told by Ferrars in that smooth and lucid style that is characteristic of much of her writing.
It involves one of her typical groups of middle-class, respectable people, literary types in this case, a suspected poisoning and an inexplicable disappearance on a wild and stormy evening. Most of the activity is confined to an old house and a nearby hotel and the cast of characters is an intimate one - a classic closed circle setup.
Ferrars was always highly readable and it is never a chore to spend time on one of her books. That said, this brief novel feels a little lightweight, and the resolution is somewhat ambiguous.
It involves one of her typical groups of middle-class, respectable people, literary types in this case, a suspected poisoning and an inexplicable disappearance on a wild and stormy evening. Most of the activity is confined to an old house and a nearby hotel and the cast of characters is an intimate one - a classic closed circle setup.
Ferrars was always highly readable and it is never a chore to spend time on one of her books. That said, this brief novel feels a little lightweight, and the resolution is somewhat ambiguous.
August 4, 2026
The english proverb from which the book takes its title refers to the fact that, essentially, there's always still plenty of time for things to go wrong. In this case, the book unfortunately takes that too literally, and this novel from 1975 just outstays its welcome, to the point that we don't really care about whether or not Dan Braille is missing, dead, being poisoned or dying of something natural and terminal, nor do we care who might be behind it, if it is indeed something with nefarious intent.
February 15, 2025
Felt the woman in the story was very naive but was probably due to the date it was written (we have come a long way).. She was gullible to have gone along with the things she did. Otherwise liked the book and it read quickly.
October 31, 2023
Not for me. I didn't warm to the characters and found the plot unconvincing.
November 1, 2025
An intriguing setup — a novelist convinced one of his friends is trying to poison him — pulls you in straight away. Ferrars builds the tension nicely through subtle digs, and quiet paranoia, before the story takes a darker turn when one of the group is suddenly killed. Two crimes is a nice twist.
That said, the ending dragged a little for me. The final explanations went on longer than they needed to, taking some of the sting out of an otherwise clever twist. Still, it’s a thoughtful, character-driven mystery with that classic Ferrars touch — genteel settings, sharp observations, and just enough menace under the surface.
That said, the ending dragged a little for me. The final explanations went on longer than they needed to, taking some of the sting out of an otherwise clever twist. Still, it’s a thoughtful, character-driven mystery with that classic Ferrars touch — genteel settings, sharp observations, and just enough menace under the surface.
July 24, 2016
Beautifully constructed mystery turning on fine characterization and keen insight. One of Ferrars' best.
July 13, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews