Elizabeth E.X. Ferrars is the pen name of Morna Doris McTaggert Brown, a celebrated British author known for her mystery, thriller, crime fiction, and suspense novels. Ferrars was born in Rangoon, Burma, to a Scottish father and an Irish-German mother. She grew up in England, where she attended Bedales school and later earned a diploma in journalism at London University.
Ferrars' writing career began with two novels, "Turn Single" (1932) and "Broken Music" (1934), published under her real name, Morna McTaggart. However, she adopted the pseudonym Elizabeth Ferrars in 1940 when she published her first crime novel, "Give a Corpse a Bad Name." This novel marked the debut of her young detective, Toby Dyke, who appeared in five other novels by Ferrars. Ferrars' decision to use a pen name was influenced by her mother's maiden name, Ferrars, and she sometimes used the name Elizabeth X. Ferrars, particularly in the USA.
Ferrars' life was marked by several significant events, including her marriage to her first husband and later to Dr. Robert Brown, a lecturer in botany at Bedford College. She left her first husband and moved in with Dr. Brown in 1942, eventually divorcing her first husband in 1945 and marrying Dr. Brown. The couple moved to the USA when Dr. Brown was offered a post at Cornell University but returned to Britain after a year. They traveled extensively with Dr. Brown's work, including a visit to Adelaide when he was a visiting professor at the University of South Australia. In 1967, they moved to Edinburgh, where Dr. Brown was appointed Regius Professor of Botany, and lived there until 1977 when they retired to Blewsbury in Oxfordshire. Ferrars continued to write a crime novel almost every year, and in 1953, she became a founding member of the Crime Writers' Association, serving as its chairperson in 1977. She wrote over seventy novels, with her final one, "A Thief in the Night," published posthumously.
Ferrars' writing was characterized by a "sound grasp of motives and human relations" and a "due regard for probability and technique," although critics have noted that her people and plot can be standard. Despite this, her work has been widely read and appreciated by fans of crime fiction and mystery novels. Ferrars' life and career were marked by her love for writing and her ability to create engaging and suspenseful stories that have captivated readers for generations.