It won't be much longer now. Keep your head and hold your tongue."

In Shadows Before, events from the past are the catalyst for murder. In hope of a fresh start after being acquitted of the murder of his sister-in-law, Matthew Weir has moved his family to Spanwater, a remote manor in the Cotswolds. But his heiress wife Catherine is traumatised by her sister's death and Matthew's trial, and has retreated into childhood memories, believing she is living in the Welsh border cottage of her childhood. Hired to keep Catherine safe in her wanderings, companion Aurelia Brett is fleeing poverty and hunger in London, Matthew's brother Augustus is trying to elude past debts. His nephew is haunted by the death of his father. Then Catherine dies suddenly, and arsenic is found in her home-made tea. Evidence suggests someone in the house, but Chief Inspector Pardoe finds conflicting clues and suspicious behaviour among Spanwater's neighbours too. When a second death occurs, Pardoe - and the reader - must decide which shadows points to the perpetrator and why.

Dorothy Bowers (1902 - 1948) was a champion of "fair play" mysteries, in which all the clues are cunningly displayed within the context of the story.

About the Author

DOROTHY BOWERS (1902-1948) was a champion of "fair play" mysteries in which all the clues are cunningly displayed within the story. The daughter of a bakery owner, she attended Oxford university, and later became a History teacher, supplementing her income by compiling crossword puzzles. A member of the Detection Club, Bowers wrote five crime thrillers before her early death from tuberculosis.

Reviews

"Dorothy Bowers' second novel fully lives up to the promise of her first, to which it is a sequel only in the sense that it employs the same cool, reasonable Inspector Pardoe. But the murder that he has to investigate in "Shadows Before" is a sequel; it was because Matthew Weir was accused (though acquitted) of his sister-in-law's murder that he moved to the Cotswold country that his wife's mental state grew peculiar enough to lead to the engagement of a companion for her. It was a natural sequel too that, when Mrs Weir died of arsenic, Scotland Yard was instantly called in; and it was natural to find the shadows of the past lying across the characters involved by the second crime.

There are other shadows too. Though this is not one of those chess-board problems that set all the pieces on the board from the start, there is plenty of material evidence to occupy the reader's attention; indeed, the reader is more generously treated than Pardoe. But the author (fairly enough, and principally by the high quality of her writing) diverts the attention to the realm of character, and so successfully that the absence of adequate motive for Mrs Weir's murder (and for others that follow) seems a negligible factor. But when the truth is revealed, the motive is unquestionable; and for all the melodrama we have a picture of a dreadful but far from incredible killer.

At certain points the construction is deliberately obscure: I think this is a mistake, but not so serious a one as to detract from the book's outstanding merit."

-- Milward Kennedy * The Sunday Times *

It is often said that not a first book but the second that is the true test of a young author's ability. If this is so the test is one Miss Dorothy Bowers passes with distinction in "Shadows Before," which improves even upon the promise of her earlier effort. The story tells of the death by poisoning of the wife of Matthew Weir, already tried and acquitted of the murder of his sister-in-law. The investigation is in the hands of Chief Inspector Pardoe, and even after he has begun his inquiry the murderer strikes again and again. Then, too, a friend of the dead woman has mysteriously disappeared, and there is an heiress to a great fortune of whom nothing can be heard. Characterisation and writing are both excellent, though possibly the narrative might be more effective if Miss Bowers were a trifle less addicted to the oblique approach. It is often an impressive and successful method, but one Miss Bowers is inclined to overwork.

-- E.R. Punshon * The Manchester Guardian *

Miss Dorothy Bowers is going to be a good writer of detective stories. She can tell her story, make her people real, cast her "Shadows Before", so that her readers feel intheir bones that something terrible is going to happen.

-- William Blunt * The Observer *



Book Information
ISBN 9781899000104
Author Dorothy Bowers
Format Paperback
Page Count 286
Imprint Moonstone Press
Publisher Moonstone Press