Give a Corpse a Bad Name

On a cold winter's night, a man is run over while lying drunk in the middle of a Devon lane. Driving the car is local resident Anna Milne, an attractive widow from South Africa. It could be an unfortunate accident, but strange coincidence hints at more. For the dead man also comes from South Africa. And he has Anna Milne's address in his pocket... In conjunction with the police, it is Toby Dyke, ex-reporter and man of no fixed occupation, who investigates the curious circumstance of the stranger's death.

Elizabeth Ferrars was one of the most distinguished crime writers of her generation. She was described by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine as 'The writer who may be the closest of all to Christie in style, plotting and general milieu'. Born in 1907 in Rangoon, Burma, the author grew up in Hampshire, England, before studying journalism in London. Her first crime novel, Give a Corpse a Bad Name, was published in 1940. During her career, she wrote more than seventy novels and became immensely popular in America, where she was published as E.X. Ferrars. In 1953, she became a founding member of the British Crime Writers' Association and, in the early 1980s, was awarded its Silver Dagger for a lifetime's achievement. She died in 1995.