An unknown man dies in an apparent accident on a dangerous stretch of road. How many mysteries open with similar scenes? Often, that unknown person is almost impossible to identify. Not so, this time - in fact, people seem all too eager to identify him. But is that identification reliable? It certainly looks as if someone is trying to "Give a Corpse a Bad Name," the title of the first book by Elizabeth Ferrars. It's the subject of this week's review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.
The book begins with an apparent accident in the English village of Chovey: a man is run over by a car, driven by a local woman. As the man, who had apparently been lying in the road, had obviously been very drunk - and the horrified driver was completely sober - it would seem to be just an unfortunate accident along a particularly dangerous road.
Only things are not quite so straightforward. A local landowner identifies the body as that of his son - but the landowner's wife insists that he is wrong. A former crime reporter, Toby Dyke, assisted by his friend George (who never does reveal his last name!), gets involved, trying to help the police determine what really happened - and the true identity of the victim.
All I'm willing to say beyond that is to warn you to take nothing for granted in this delightful mystery, for there are plenty of twists and turns along the way to a startling solution. Elizabeth Ferrars - in the United States, her books were published under the name "E. X. Ferrars" - had a long, popular and prolific career writing mysteries. "Give a Corpse a Bad Name," published in 1940, at the end of the Golden Age of Detection, was her first - and, it appears, one of her best. Lovers of vintage mysteries should add this one to their To Be Read piles. Long out of print, it has been brought back by the Langtail Press, which has also published it in an edition for the Amazon Kindle.
Sounds like my kind of book, Les. I've got a few vintage reads lined up for Bev's Vintage Challenge starting in Jan. I think I'll try and find a copy of this one. Yeah, just what I need, another book. HA!
Posted by: Yvette | November 28, 2011 at 10:54 PM
Ferrars is an interesting author, Yvette - and a new one for me; I'll be reading more of hers.
Posted by: Les Blatt | November 29, 2011 at 06:11 AM
I love the Ferrars books that I've read so far--maybe 8 or so (I'd have to pull up my spreadsheets...). Glad to see you've discovered her.
Posted by: Bev@My Reader's Block | December 04, 2011 at 09:17 AM
Bev, she wrote an astounding number of mysteries over her career. The list of titles at the GAD wiki is huge, running from her first novel in 1940 to her last, published in 1997, two years after her death. Looks like I have some reading to do... ;-)
Posted by: Les Blatt | December 05, 2011 at 08:56 AM