The Clock That Wouldn't Stop

Alex Summerill was the confidante of thousands of readers of the daily newspaper to which she contributed a weekly advice column. Her warm-hearted counsel went out all over England to distracted lovers, women with faithless husbands, men with faithless wives. Occasionally she even received letters confessing to serious crimes. Realising what a goldmine her correspondence could be for anyone with the slightest penchant for blackmail, she took exceptional care of the letters sent to her. But it is one letter that doesn't reach her that precipitates murder . . .

One of the most distinguished crime writers of her generation, Elizabeth Ferrars was born in Rangoon and came to Britain at the age of six. She was a pupil at Bedales school between 1918 and 1924, studied journalism at London University and published her first crime novel, Give a Corpse a Bad Name, in 1940, the year that she met her second husband, academic Robert Brown. Highly praised by critics, her brand of intelligent, gripping mysteries beloved by readers, she wrote over seventy novels and was also published (as E. X. Ferrars) in the States, where she was equally popular. Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine described her as as 'the writer who may be the closest of all to Christie in style, plotting and general milieu', and the Washington Post called her 'a consummate professional in clever plotting, characterization and atmosphere'. She was a founding member of the Crime Writer's Association, who, in the early 1980s, gave her a lifetime achievement award.