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Virginia Freer #7
Sleep of the Unjust
Hollywood actor Andrew Appleyard, in England for the wedding of his cousin & former Fiancee inexplicably committed suicide.More inexplicicably still, he left two conflicting suicide notes & fragments of a third in another hand.Virginia Freer,a wedding guest & her husband Felix had seldom been faced with amore distressing puzzle- but it took Felix to work out that the roots of the tragedy lay deeper in the past & that an extremely calculating & cold-blooded killer was at work.
- GenresMystery
208 pages, Hardcover
First published November 5, 1990
29 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 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 16, 2013
This is the first E.X. Ferrars book that I've read and I'm sure that I will be reading others since this book reminds me somewhat of an Agatha Christie mystery. Virginia Freer is invited to a wedding in a country home in England and she is shocked on a number of accounts. First, her ex-husband Felix is another of the guests, second, the son of the family, Andrew, who has moved to America and become a minor movie star arrives unexpectedly to a wide range of strong emotion. And, finally, Andrew is found dead the next morning with a suicide note beside him. Wait, there is another suicide note giving a second reason for Andrew's taking his life. And a partial third that is in another handwriting. Is it suicide or murder? A quick read with lots of red herrings that I finished in a couple of hours on a snowy afternoon.
January 12, 2017
The plot seemed slightly unlikely and everyone came up with the most ridiculous reasons and suggestions for everything, constantly ignoring the most simple explanation, but all in all it led to a cozy vibe in the manner of the show Murder She Wrote or Agatha Christie's novels. Not exactly something that kept me on the edge of my seat but it was entertaining and nice. I will certainly be seeking out more mysteries by this author as I enjoyed her style of writing.
May 17, 2021
I think this is the most interesting one of the series.
August 23, 2014
Virginia Freer is a houseguest at her friend Christine's house, as everyone prepares for the wedding of Christine's niece Sonia. Another guest--unexpected--is Christine's son Andrew, a Hollywood actor who was once engaged to Sonia. When one of the attendees is found, an apparent suicide, with three separate suicide notes around the body, Virginia's estranged husband Felix feels he must take a hand in the mystery.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews