A Tale of Two Murders by Elizabeth Ferrars (Fontana, 1961)

Bought in the same batch of books as Always Say Die.

It entertained Hilda Gazely to speculated about the strange woman who walked the river bank at sunset.  But murder and the facts which came to light afterwards made her ask herself desperately how she could have been so complacently blind to what had been happening around her.  Hilda was unusually impressed by Inspector Crankshaw and told him all she could--then she became uneasy.  She was sure that something she had seen, done or said was utterly wrong.

 The problem with writing about mysteries is you really can't say too much without giving away important plot points.  Suffice it to say that a thoroughly nasty character is murdered, and almost all the suspects have good reason to do away with him.

A Tale of Two Murders also introduces the delightfully cynical, "heard-it-all-before" Inspector Crankshaw:

    Not impatiently, but in a considering tone, as if , as if he were speaking mainly to himself, to clear his own mind, Crankshaw said, "A widower, faithful to the memory of his wife, not many friends, but such as he had, good ones--that's the picture, then."
    She raised her head quickly, grateful that he should have understood, and was shocked to see the irony in his small, sly eyes.

 Oh, and in the end, Crankshaw gets his man.

Always Say Die by Elizabeth Ferrars (Fontana, 1962)

Another gem from Lifeline:

Violet Gamlen had been missing for a year.  Speculation and rumour ran wild, but one person thought he knew her whereabouts-

'Don't you see, that man's started gardening again.  He couldn't bury a body amongst all that weed without the signs of digging betraying him, but when it's been all freshly dug...'

 I kept trying to work out what was wrong with this cover, until I realised that the artist had problems with both perspective and proportion.   The cat leaping out at our frightened heroine is seemingly enormous, and meanwhile the lady herself appears to have a very large right arm and a very small left one.

Not that it matters, because the mystery of what happened to Violet Gamlen and who was responsible for it was enthralling and kept me guessing until the end.  Elizabeth Ferrars is one of those writers who is now less well known than she should be given the length of her career and the number of books she wrote.  However, unlike some of her better known contemporaries (Ngaio Marsh, for example) most of her books are standalone novels.   The lack of a continuing detective hero probably made her "brand" less memorable than it could have been.