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Toby Dyke #2
Remove the Bodies
Book by Ferrars, Elizabeth
- GenresMystery
390 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1940
1 person is currently reading
26 people want to read
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 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 1, 2014
1940, apa REHEARSALS FOR MURDER; #1 Toby Dyke, sometime journalist & friend George, retired detective, rural England. Solid classic-style village mystery, semi-idyllic, with dark overtones. Three-and-ond-half stars.
Toby hasn't seen nor heard from Lou Capell in ages, but she shows up at his London flat one late evening. She's not only terribly anxious, she's frightened, and she wants to borrow money from him (presumably to "get away from it all"). The usually very persuasive Toby can't get any information from the usually loquacious Lou, but decides to take a chance and loan the money anyway. When Lou is found dead under suspicious circumstances (was it really suicide?) he and George are pitchforked into the investigation due to Toby's curiosity, as yet unsatisfied.
Why did she need the money so badly - and so quickly? Who or what was she so frightened of? And did she commit suicide, or was it murder, and if so, why? And who... Not a suspenser nor a had-I-but-known, this is a tidy classic-style rural English mystery set in a small village amongst a closed circle of wealthy folks and their hangers-on.
Ferrars' first mystery novel is crisp, cleanly plotted, and filled with unexpectedly funny bits, most of which appear to be intentional. Now long forgotten, she was quite popular in the 1940s through the early 1980s, and while this early novel is a bit formulaic it's nonetheless a very good read.
I was looking forward to reading her next fairly soon (GIVE A CORPSE A BAD NAME, 1940), but it's not available at my beloved library, and appears to currently be available to purchase only at prices over my limit of $10. So I will, for now, anticipate reading her third in series - DEATH IN BOTANISTS' BAY, 1941. I always enjoy "discovering" new-to-me authors and reading their works in published sequence; I suspect Ms. Ferrars and I will spend many happy hours together in the next year.
Toby hasn't seen nor heard from Lou Capell in ages, but she shows up at his London flat one late evening. She's not only terribly anxious, she's frightened, and she wants to borrow money from him (presumably to "get away from it all"). The usually very persuasive Toby can't get any information from the usually loquacious Lou, but decides to take a chance and loan the money anyway. When Lou is found dead under suspicious circumstances (was it really suicide?) he and George are pitchforked into the investigation due to Toby's curiosity, as yet unsatisfied.
Why did she need the money so badly - and so quickly? Who or what was she so frightened of? And did she commit suicide, or was it murder, and if so, why? And who... Not a suspenser nor a had-I-but-known, this is a tidy classic-style rural English mystery set in a small village amongst a closed circle of wealthy folks and their hangers-on.
Ferrars' first mystery novel is crisp, cleanly plotted, and filled with unexpectedly funny bits, most of which appear to be intentional. Now long forgotten, she was quite popular in the 1940s through the early 1980s, and while this early novel is a bit formulaic it's nonetheless a very good read.
I was looking forward to reading her next fairly soon (GIVE A CORPSE A BAD NAME, 1940), but it's not available at my beloved library, and appears to currently be available to purchase only at prices over my limit of $10. So I will, for now, anticipate reading her third in series - DEATH IN BOTANISTS' BAY, 1941. I always enjoy "discovering" new-to-me authors and reading their works in published sequence; I suspect Ms. Ferrars and I will spend many happy hours together in the next year.
November 22, 2022
A bunch of eccentric and unrealistic people running around doing eccentric and unrealistic things. If detective fiction is a study of human character, then the characterization in this book was inconsistent. If a work of good detective fiction is one that is well-plotted, then this book is incoherent. And yet, as is the case with many middling works of detective fiction, it was an easy, almost compulsive read.
March 9, 2024
This book takes us back to the 1920s in a small village in the English countryside. Everything happens there and everyone knows each other. Toby is a journalist who is trying his luck in London and George is a retired investigator; one day Lou Campbell - a friend and resident of the village - arrives at Toby's flat to ask him for money and she looks quite desperate, so he agrees. After a few days Lou turns up dead in rather strange circumstances and the journalist decides to return home to investigate what has happened and to find out if it was an accident or if it was provoked.
The story of the book is interesting. The characters are quite diverse and easy to follow. The setting is a plus point of this book that made me move to a charming English village, but also with the gossip and rivalries typical of these environments. The theme of the investigation is quite desirable, as it comes to some rather questionable conclusions and with elements that make you think that they were put there too intentionally by the author, without a background or a logical explanation.
Another thing that hindered my reading was the pace. Too slow and ponderous. The dialogue felt unnatural and very stilted. There were interactions that were superfluous and at the same time I felt they were just fillers. I wanted to keep reading to find out what was going on but at the same time the words were too much of a ball.
The story of the book is interesting. The characters are quite diverse and easy to follow. The setting is a plus point of this book that made me move to a charming English village, but also with the gossip and rivalries typical of these environments. The theme of the investigation is quite desirable, as it comes to some rather questionable conclusions and with elements that make you think that they were put there too intentionally by the author, without a background or a logical explanation.
Another thing that hindered my reading was the pace. Too slow and ponderous. The dialogue felt unnatural and very stilted. There were interactions that were superfluous and at the same time I felt they were just fillers. I wanted to keep reading to find out what was going on but at the same time the words were too much of a ball.
June 28, 2019
AKA Rehearsals for Murder.
Ferrars is not getting better. I don't know if it's just because this was her second crime novel and she needed more time to learn her craft, but she commits the same sins against good writing as before. No one can say anything at all germane to the plot without the phone ringing, someone interrupting, or that same person simply refusing to continue speaking. Dyke does a lot of "Aha!"-ing without explaining, though he and his sidekick George repeatedly claim to know all. Lots of silent communication. Too many characters, too much needless chatter and cutting off of interesting stuff, too many loose threads. The ending made me want to punch her three ways--hard, fast and repeatedly! There is such a thing as a good plot twist, but there's also needless obfuscation. There's a too much of that in this book. One star means "did not like it." Well there you go, I didn't. I felt only exasperated with the author, not intrigued. Only finished it because it made no sense and I hoped it might, eventually. There was a "resolution" but not one I'd say made sense.
Waste of time. No wonder Ferrars is not as well known as Marsh, Christie, Sayers or even Christianna Brand.
Ferrars is not getting better. I don't know if it's just because this was her second crime novel and she needed more time to learn her craft, but she commits the same sins against good writing as before. No one can say anything at all germane to the plot without the phone ringing, someone interrupting, or that same person simply refusing to continue speaking. Dyke does a lot of "Aha!"-ing without explaining, though he and his sidekick George repeatedly claim to know all. Lots of silent communication. Too many characters, too much needless chatter and cutting off of interesting stuff, too many loose threads. The ending made me want to punch her three ways--hard, fast and repeatedly! There is such a thing as a good plot twist, but there's also needless obfuscation. There's a too much of that in this book. One star means "did not like it." Well there you go, I didn't. I felt only exasperated with the author, not intrigued. Only finished it because it made no sense and I hoped it might, eventually. There was a "resolution" but not one I'd say made sense.
Waste of time. No wonder Ferrars is not as well known as Marsh, Christie, Sayers or even Christianna Brand.
September 29, 2018
Lou Capell is eager to be helpful. The charming young woman has no enemies, so why should her friend Toby Dyke get a phone call saying that she's just been murdered? When Dyke, and his enigmatic friend George, show up at the house party where Lou has been staying, he finds a strange group of people, with the hostess's recent ex-husband staying at a nearby inn. No one has a word to say against Lou, but she's dead, poisoned, in her room. Fortunately, although the policeman in charge dislikes Dyke, he's aware that Dyke notices some things that he might miss. Soon there's another body, and Dyke realizes he knows everything--except who killed Lou and why. But George has been noticing things, too...
June 3, 2020
I wouldn't bother. It's a pretty uninteresting mystery with bland and irritating characters.
November 12, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews