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Experiment with Death
After killing Guy Lampard, director of a large research institute in England, the murderer changed all of the clocks at the institute, leaving the police unable to determine where the suspects were at the time of the crime
- GenresMystery
181 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1981
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30 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 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 29, 2022
Guy Lampard, the Director of the King's Weltham Institute of Pomology, is a two-sided coin. To those he likes and those he can play Lord Bountiful to, he is a great man. He can be kind and generous--helping out a colleague whose wife needs to be kept in an expensive healthcare facility, for instance. But Dr. Jekyll has his Hyde and so does Lampard. To those he dislikes, he is everything from a mere hindrance to evil incarnate. He takes great delight in pitting certain colleagues against each other and watching the feathers fly. And when he hires an old "friend" Sam Partlett to join the institute, it becomes apparent that he just missed tormenting Partlett. Partlett is susceptible to alcohol and can get quite violent when in his cups. Lampard loves pouring the drinks and then watching the fur fly.
When Lampard is found in his office with his throat cut, there are plenty of suspects--from Partlett to Bill Carver who was passed over for the position which Partlett was given to Roger, the Assistant Director, who some say was competing with Lampard for the affections of Dr. Emma Ritchie (and who the police seem to think would just step into the Director's shoes now that they're empty) to whomever Partlett thought was pilfering the drug supply and selling barbiturates on the side. But having plenty of suspects doesn't help when everyone seems to have an alibi and no one can explain who changed the clocks in the various labs and why. The police seem to have chose Roger as the hot favorite. Emma is sure that Roger didn't do it and Roger thinks he knows who did but can't see where the proof is. And then there's another death and Roger asks a simple question. He thinks his solution answers that question...but Emma isn't so sure.
An interesting closed circle mystery with an academic feel even though the institute isn't, strictly speaking, an academic institution. It is a research facility focused on apples--though it really could be any school or research center with the standard allotment of jealousy and grievances. We throw "pomology" about when speaking of the institute, but the only real reference to the work with apples is the running theme of Emma trying to write an article on the effects of carbon dioxide concentrations on apples (and not getting very far...). Otherwise, the purpose of the facility is pretty irrelevant to the story.
The issue of the clocks is a clever twist on the whole "change the time" thing. When is an alibi not an alibi and yet can prove that someone didn't do it? Ferrars is a competent plotter and produces an accurate portrayal of the insular world of the research facility. But somehow her books always lack a certain something that would propel them into the four or five star range. They're good, solid mysteries but the characters, while given distinct personalities, just don't make you care all that much about them.
First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting portions of review. Thanks.
When Lampard is found in his office with his throat cut, there are plenty of suspects--from Partlett to Bill Carver who was passed over for the position which Partlett was given to Roger, the Assistant Director, who some say was competing with Lampard for the affections of Dr. Emma Ritchie (and who the police seem to think would just step into the Director's shoes now that they're empty) to whomever Partlett thought was pilfering the drug supply and selling barbiturates on the side. But having plenty of suspects doesn't help when everyone seems to have an alibi and no one can explain who changed the clocks in the various labs and why. The police seem to have chose Roger as the hot favorite. Emma is sure that Roger didn't do it and Roger thinks he knows who did but can't see where the proof is. And then there's another death and Roger asks a simple question. He thinks his solution answers that question...but Emma isn't so sure.
An interesting closed circle mystery with an academic feel even though the institute isn't, strictly speaking, an academic institution. It is a research facility focused on apples--though it really could be any school or research center with the standard allotment of jealousy and grievances. We throw "pomology" about when speaking of the institute, but the only real reference to the work with apples is the running theme of Emma trying to write an article on the effects of carbon dioxide concentrations on apples (and not getting very far...). Otherwise, the purpose of the facility is pretty irrelevant to the story.
The issue of the clocks is a clever twist on the whole "change the time" thing. When is an alibi not an alibi and yet can prove that someone didn't do it? Ferrars is a competent plotter and produces an accurate portrayal of the insular world of the research facility. But somehow her books always lack a certain something that would propel them into the four or five star range. They're good, solid mysteries but the characters, while given distinct personalities, just don't make you care all that much about them.
First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting portions of review. Thanks.
October 21, 2018
Some people think Guy Lampard, director of a pomology institute, is the nicest man in the world. Some think he's a terrible person. One of the scientists there, Emma Ritchie, who has known him for a long time and likes him, realizes that he is probably both. When Guy is murdered in his office, Emma is afraid that Roger, the assistant director, the man she loves, will be suspected, which he is. But Roger asks a question that no one else has thought about. The problem is that he and Emma have different answers.
May 11, 2010
Was a fun read. Fun style. Fairly predictable, only listened to it cause we had it on the computer. But was pretty ok.
March 7, 2014
good whodunit with nice twist in the end
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews