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Partire è un po' morire
In procinto di sposare una ricca ereditiera, l’ex ufficiale dell’esercito inglese Mark Auty decide di festeggiare l’evento organizzando un party in una villa di Nizza per un gruppo di amici. Tra gli invitati c’è anche Sarah Wing, una vecchia conoscente che Auty ha rivisto di recente a Londra in circostanze assai particolari: Sarah, infatti, aveva appena assistito a un incidente stradale – che a suo dire non era stato un incidente – in cui un’automobile impazzita aveva investito e ucciso un uomo. Ripresasi dallo shock, aveva accettato la proposta di Auty di unirsi alla comitiva. Ma quando tutti gli invitati si radunano nella dimora del loro ospite prima di prendere il volo che li condurrà a destinazione, Sarah si trova di fronte niente meno che… il conducente del veicolo assassino. La donna, impaurita, cerca invano di parlare con Auty, mentre in casa l’atmosfera è stranamente carica di tensione. Sono davvero i suoi migliori amici quelli che Auty ha invitato lì? E qual è il reale motivo di quella riunione? Le domande sono molte, ma la certezza è una sola: uno dei presenti non uscirà vivo da quel luogo. Scritto nel 1953, Partire è un po’ morire (Murder in Time) è qui presentato per la prima volta in traduzione integrale.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1953
2 people are currently reading
28 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Ferrars
91 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
June 19, 2012
I saw the name of Elizabeth Ferrars on the spine of a green Penguin, and it rang a distant bell. I’d read a few of her books, years ago when the only crime writer I knew was Agatha Christie and I was looking around to see who else I might like.
As I recall I’d liked her enough to pick up a few of her books from the library, but she slipped from my mind when she fell out of fashion and her books disappeared from the library shelves.
I picked up Murder in Time, not really thinking it might be a book to buy, just to place the author. But when I read the synopsis I was intrigued, I saw similarities with a very famous crime novel, but I saw differences too.
“Nothing could sound more innocently gay – or fantastically extravagant – than a flight on a specially chartered plane for a week-end in Nice. But most of the people whom Mark Auty invited suspected some sinister intention. why, then, did they accept? For accept they did, coming from such far-removed places as a pub on the edge of Dartmoor, a Bloomsbury hotel, a quiet Oxfordshire village, a Soho night-club, to gather for the journet in Mark’s Surrey home. Why Mark really asked them and why they accepted are questions that are only answered in full after murder has intervened …”
I was to discover that, fourteen years after Agatha Christie’s ‘And Then there Were None,’ Elizabeth Ferrars took the same starting point and did something entirely different with it.
First she introduced her guests, dropping in on them in their own homes as they consider whether to accept that extraordinary invitation. An elderly woman, pacing, chain-smoking, as her son offers counsel. A blustering publican, whose pretty young wife, so used to getting her own way, is having trouble persuading her husband to accept. A middle-class couple, whose comfortable morning routine has been shattered by contents of the intriguing envelope that the postman delivered.
The portraits are beautifully drawn, the characters are clearly set out, but their stories are so clearly untold. And from start to finish, the writing, the characterisation, the storytelling, are all pitch perfect.
The scene switches, sharply. A young woman sees a man mown down by a car on a London street. it looked like an accident, but she had caught sight of the driver. It was deliberate. Murder.
Sarah tells the police what she has seen and then, still deeply shocked, turns to go home. She walks straight into Mark Auty. Their paths had crossed during the war, when she was his driver. He sees her distress, listens to her story, walks her home, takes time to make sure she is alright. And then he invites her to join his house party.
She is tempted, but it seems so strange. Mark explains why he is holding the party, why he wants her there, and that tips the balance. She accepts.
A strange house-party gathers. And then there is another, audacious, murder.
The police investigate. The guests talk about what has happened, they tell their stories – or in some cases have their stories drawn out of them. But it was difficult to know who was telling the truth, how the facts would fit together. As new facts emerged I changed my mind about what might have happened, about what was truth and what was lie. I had an idea, but I couldn’t make all the pieces fit.
And in the end I don’t think Elizabeth Ferrars quite succeeded in fitting them together. I was happy with the answers to the questions about Mark Auty. there were a couple of loose ends, but by and large things made sense. But I was a little less happy with the answers to the questions about the murders. The logic worked but the psychology was a bit of a stretch.
Just one little weakness in an excellent piece of crime writing: an intriguing mix of traditional, country house mystery with something a little darker, a little more modern, all rooted in real history.
It’s very clever, there are some lovely touches, and I’d love to write more, but I can’t without giving too much away.
I wonder if Elizabeth Ferrars has written anything else as good …
As I recall I’d liked her enough to pick up a few of her books from the library, but she slipped from my mind when she fell out of fashion and her books disappeared from the library shelves.
I picked up Murder in Time, not really thinking it might be a book to buy, just to place the author. But when I read the synopsis I was intrigued, I saw similarities with a very famous crime novel, but I saw differences too.
“Nothing could sound more innocently gay – or fantastically extravagant – than a flight on a specially chartered plane for a week-end in Nice. But most of the people whom Mark Auty invited suspected some sinister intention. why, then, did they accept? For accept they did, coming from such far-removed places as a pub on the edge of Dartmoor, a Bloomsbury hotel, a quiet Oxfordshire village, a Soho night-club, to gather for the journet in Mark’s Surrey home. Why Mark really asked them and why they accepted are questions that are only answered in full after murder has intervened …”
I was to discover that, fourteen years after Agatha Christie’s ‘And Then there Were None,’ Elizabeth Ferrars took the same starting point and did something entirely different with it.
First she introduced her guests, dropping in on them in their own homes as they consider whether to accept that extraordinary invitation. An elderly woman, pacing, chain-smoking, as her son offers counsel. A blustering publican, whose pretty young wife, so used to getting her own way, is having trouble persuading her husband to accept. A middle-class couple, whose comfortable morning routine has been shattered by contents of the intriguing envelope that the postman delivered.
The portraits are beautifully drawn, the characters are clearly set out, but their stories are so clearly untold. And from start to finish, the writing, the characterisation, the storytelling, are all pitch perfect.
The scene switches, sharply. A young woman sees a man mown down by a car on a London street. it looked like an accident, but she had caught sight of the driver. It was deliberate. Murder.
Sarah tells the police what she has seen and then, still deeply shocked, turns to go home. She walks straight into Mark Auty. Their paths had crossed during the war, when she was his driver. He sees her distress, listens to her story, walks her home, takes time to make sure she is alright. And then he invites her to join his house party.
She is tempted, but it seems so strange. Mark explains why he is holding the party, why he wants her there, and that tips the balance. She accepts.
A strange house-party gathers. And then there is another, audacious, murder.
The police investigate. The guests talk about what has happened, they tell their stories – or in some cases have their stories drawn out of them. But it was difficult to know who was telling the truth, how the facts would fit together. As new facts emerged I changed my mind about what might have happened, about what was truth and what was lie. I had an idea, but I couldn’t make all the pieces fit.
And in the end I don’t think Elizabeth Ferrars quite succeeded in fitting them together. I was happy with the answers to the questions about Mark Auty. there were a couple of loose ends, but by and large things made sense. But I was a little less happy with the answers to the questions about the murders. The logic worked but the psychology was a bit of a stretch.
Just one little weakness in an excellent piece of crime writing: an intriguing mix of traditional, country house mystery with something a little darker, a little more modern, all rooted in real history.
It’s very clever, there are some lovely touches, and I’d love to write more, but I can’t without giving too much away.
I wonder if Elizabeth Ferrars has written anything else as good …
September 23, 2017
Peccato, sarebbe stato un bel giallo d'epoca, pieno d'atmosfera e con possibili grossi colpi di scena. Ma crolla miseramente nel finale inconcludende che da poche vaghe spiegazioni sull'omicidio, cosa inconcepibile in un giallo classico.
April 19, 2023
Trama da classicone, con parecchi personaggi che avrebbero ben donde di uccidere la vittima designata… peccato che sul finale diventi tutto molto frenetico e si risolva con due battute davanti a un birra. Tre stelle per l’ambientazione e la costruzione dell’insieme. Altrimenti sarebbe da 2
March 18, 2021
For my full review click on the link below:
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress...
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress...
January 8, 2014
A drawn out who dunnit and not really culminating into anything special.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews