Morna Doris McTaggart (1907-1995) was a prolific mystery writer, from her debut in 1940 with Give the Corpse a Bad Name to A Choice of Evils in the year of her death, using the name Elizabeth Ferrars in Great Britain but the gender-unspecific E.X. Ferrars in the United States. She was one of the best and most unfairly neglected of the generation of classicists who emerged at the end of the Golden Age of Detection, a puzzle-spinner in the Christie mode who was ahead of her time in her strong women characters and views on gender relationships.

The second entry in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series, edited by Elizabeth Foxwell, lives up the high standard set by the first, on John Buchan. (Sadly, principal author Macdonald died before the book was published.) Following chronological and alphabetical lists of the subject's works, a brief biography and career chronology, the main section consists of alphabetical entries on book titles (including substantial plot synopses and quotes from contemporary reviews), characters, subjects, locales, subgenre definitions, and themes. Two manuscript pages with corrections are reproduced. The primary and secondary bibliography covers more than 20 double-column pages. One serious error: the late San Francisco Chronicle reviewer and well-known mystery writer Lenore Glen Offord becomes Leonard.