Elizabeth Ferrars, who is known in the United States as E. X. Ferrars, has been entertaining readers on both sides of the Atlantic with traditional mystery novels and short stories since 1940. In 1980 she received a special Silver Dagger Award from the Crime Writers' Association, an organization which she cofounded in 1953, for writing "no less than 50 outstanding crime books." In Murder Must Appetize (1975) H. R. F. Keating places her among "that quite large and much-to-be-thanked band of crime authors who were writing in the good old days and are writing still in today's yet better ones." In a statement that represents Ferrars's typical work, the domestic mystery, a character in The Small World of Murder (1973) says, "Murder's generally an intimate sort of thing. It happens in a small world, a little shut-in world of violent feelings."

Ferrars, whose real name is Morna Doris MacTaggart, was born in Rangoon, Burma...