Shadows Before

Chief Inspector Dan Pardoe #2

by Dorothy Bowers

Did Mrs. Weir's habit of brewing her own herbal tea give opportunity for murder? Inspector Pardoe provides the answer in this 1940 English mystery by a writer who was compared to Dorothy L. Sayers by contemporary reviewers.

Genres: Mystery, Golden Age Mystery

286 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1939

About the author

Dorothy Violet Bowers (1902-1948) was born in Leominster. Bowers graduated from the Society of Oxford Home-Students (now St Anne’s College) with a third-class honours degree in Modern History. Temporary jobs teaching history and English did not inspire her, and she turned to writing.
Between 1938 and 1941, Bowers published four Inspector Pardoe novels in rapid succession. The outbreak of war brought Bowers to London, where she worked in the European News Service of the BBC. Her final book, The Bells at Old Bailey, was published in 1947. Never of robust health, Bowers contracted tuberculosis during this period and eventually succumbed to the disease in August 1948. She died knowing that she had been inducted into the prestigious Detection Club, the only writer selected for membership in 1948.

Reviews

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would like to have given this three and a half stars as it is not quite four but better than three.

I found it a bit of a slow starter and was getting a little bored for the first few chapters. However, once it got going and Pardoe and Salt got involved it was a very readable page turner.

The author writes in wonderful English but I do feel that sometimes the flowery prose actually gets in the way of the plot instead of enhancing it.

Dorothy Bowers tragically died at only 46 having written only five books. I have now read three of them and have the fourth and fifth in hand. So far. all of them have very good plots.

As a British reader of classic crime novels I would like to thank Rue Morgue for re-printing some of these less well known authors' works.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another excellent story featuring Chief Inspector Dan Pardoe and Sergeant Salt.

It is very atmospheric. The start may seem slow, but it does contain clues which are vital to the solution of one of the deaths.There is quite a lot of information packed into the ending, but it is possible for the reader to have a good stab at a solution.

The descriptive passages do have a tendency to slow the plot down, but the characters are so interesting and well-drawn and that more than compensates.

My thanks to Black Heath Editions for making the author's five novels available so cheaply. They are a must for all who enjoy Golden Age detective fiction.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

After Matthew Weir is acquitted of killing his sister-in-law, he moves his wealthy wife to the country where she gradually sinks into a mild dementia. When she dies, however, Weir is clearly a person of interest to the police. Fortunately for him, Scotland Yard sends wise Chief-Inspector Dan Pardoe, who sees that things in the remote Weir household are not what they seem. This Golden Age author is little known, but she can write an interesting book.

[Wesley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first 95% was great, and only the ending was somewhat convoluted and difficult to follow. Loved the setting and characters but Bowers writing style didn’t fully engross me - still the favourite mystery book I’ve read in a long time I think.

[Bev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Professor Matthew Weir escaped the gallows in 1937 by the skin of teeth. In Scotland, the verdict would likely have been brought in as "Not Proven." His highly abrasive, interfering sister-in-law had died from arsenical poisoning and the Weir's equally poisonous housekeeper had done her darnedest to see that her employer wound up with a noose around his neck. Weir university had stood by him during the entire ordeal (perhaps a point in his favor with the jury...), but he felt impelled to give up his post and flee to the country where he and his family lived in a small Tudor manor house near Oxford for two years without incident. Unless you count the slight mental decline of his wife.

It's thought wise to bring in a companion for Kate Weir--especially to accompany her on walks where she's apt to pick wild herb and whatnot to brew up her special teas. The doctor, who is instrumental in hiring Miss Brett (the companion), insists that the teas are harmless. But...Mrs. Weir had been experiencing gastric distress before Miss Brett was hired. Is that linked to the teas? Or, as the housekeeper (yes, the same one) points out, the illnesses seemed to follow hard on visits that Kate Weir made to Alice Gretton, one of the few local women with whom Mrs. Weir has made friends--could Alice have been giving Kate something to make her sick? It's interesting that the episodes stop as soon as Alice Weir disappears from her cottage.

But then Miss Brett arrives and Mrs. Weir has another, final bout of illness. And when the autopsy is done arsenic is once again the culprit. Was Matthew Weir erroneously acquitted and has he struck again? If so, he must be hoping that his wife's niece is also no longer among the living--because if Joyce Murray is alive and well in Australia, then she'll inherit everything except 6,000 pounds. But if she's dead....well, Matthew's inheritance will be much bigger. When Scotland Yard arrives in the persons of Chief Inspector Dan Pardoe and Detective Sergeant Salt, they'll have a job to find the guilty party--whether the obvious or not. Also cluttering up the possible suspects are Matthew's niece and nephew (who could benefit indirectly), an old gypsy woman who seemed to take a sudden dislike to Mrs. Weir after a brief friendship, and Matthew's brother, Augustus, who also could benefit from a brother with more ready cash. When a vehicle suffers a mysterious "accident" and the gypsy disappears, Pardoe realizes he'll need to work quickly to prevent more deaths.

This one gets off to a slow start with the lead up to the hiring of Miss Brett and her train journey to Steeple Cloudy--although I did love Miss Flora Hickey, a schoolteacher from Indiana (!), and her observations of her fellow passengers. I was disappointed that she didn't play a bigger part throughout the story (hoping for a sortof a mild version of Miss Marple and her keen people skills). But she does come through towards the end, giving Pardoe a vital clue. And speaking of Queens of Crime (Christie), I found the final letter in this partial epistolary story to be quite Sayers-like. "Mew," the mother of one of the supporting characters, reminds me of the Dowager Duchess in several of her turns of phrase. I wouldn't have minded seeing more of her (or her letters) either.

Once the second murder happens and Pardoe and Salt arrive, things pick up nicely. A good mixture of close questioning of the suspects and action and the clues are displayed fairly (though I missed a few). I noticed an early one and then promptly forgot it once other items drew my attention and was a bit surprised by the ending. If I'd been paying proper attention, I shouldn't have been. A very good outing with Pardoe and Salt.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had never heard of Dorothy Bowers before hearing about her and her short life on the Shedunnit podcast. She was extolled in contemporary accounts as being an excellent writer.

However, the writing style wasn't really my cup of tea. It tended to be flowery (literally) and I'm not the sort of person that really appreciates description THAT much. (Maybe this is connected with my aphantasia - I don't get a mental picture of the scene anyway.) All I want from the description is a good *feel* for the place. In addition, the dialogue was pretty pedestrian. Conversely, I think the general literary judgment of Agatha Christie is that she has great dialogue and relatively poor description, but that's what works for me.

But more than writing style, the structure of the story was just weird. There are all sorts of references made to an earlier murder, then we have some scenes of a woman being hired as a companion to an old lady and her settling into the household, and then there are all sorts of references to a SECOND murder, before we finally get to "see" a corpse. There were too many characters with too many names, I found it hard to keep track of everything. It may have been "fair" (another thing Dorothy Bowers was renowned for) but there was just too much and never a real "aha!" moment.

So, I wasn't really enthused by this one. I will still give other books of hers a try, but I can't say I recommend this one.

[Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this mystery from 1940, a rich woman is murdered by arsenic, administered via the vile brew she used to make from the herbs collected during her half-demented ramblings around the countryside. Moreover, her sister died of arsenic poisoning two years earlier, and her husband was tried (and acquitted) of that murder. But suspicions run deep, especially as there are several members of the extended household who could use the money left by the dead woman. When it turns out that she might have even more money to leave than originally expected -something to do with a niece that no one has ever met- the investigation turns from the immediate family to all who came into contact with the family. In the meantime, there is the minor mystery of the sudden disappearance of their rarely seen neighbor, and then later of the gypsy woman who had been the dead woman's friend.

As can be judged from this summary, this book suffers slightly from a surfeit of characters, red herrings (some of them pretty obvious) and late-breaking revelations. It's also one of those books in which there is not a single character one can really like. So all in all an unspectacular read.

[dmayr · Rating 5 out of 5]

'The shadow of something sinister' hovers over Spanwater, as intuited by the newly-engaged companion Aurelia Brett, with her employer Catherine Weir who is becoming more forgetful continuing to pick herbs which may be dangerous for her whilst the husband Matthew Weir is still living under the suspicion of poisoning his wife's sister. Impoverished relatives gather in the manor and other household members hold motives and suspicions of their own, while in a nearby cottage a mysterious tenant disappears and a gypsy woman invokes the sign to ward off evil. An atmospheric brooding piece much like Ethel Lina White's writing. Needless to say, I enjoyed it very much.

[Ms Jayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic 1939 mystery worthy of the Golden Age. Crossword compiler and former History teacher Dorothy Bowers creates an absorbing mystery full of suspicious characters and red herrings as she sends the reader down endless blind alleys.

All the ingredients of a GA mystery are here: country houses, arsenic poisoning, family doctors, lady's companions, a butler, gypsies, shifting identities and a dark, dark wood. It's all there with an old crime casting a shadow over the new one.

This is the fifth Bowers I have read and it was a lot of fun although not quite up to the standards of Fear For Miss Bettony and The Bells Of Old Bailey which had more engaging characters in the suspect list.

[Calum Reed · Rating 4 out of 5]

B:

It begins a bit uncertainly, with excessive passages of description and not a great deal of character work. I also found it odd why the book didn't begin with the Bunting case. Blossoms into a solid piece of detection, with a surprising culprit and motive (I had considered the murderer but would never have guessed them if pushed to commit). A fun time.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leisurely (I was surprised to learn afterwards it had only 300 pages) murder mystery from the so-called Golden Age. Very well written but slow-moving, and the full explication of the crime in the last chapter is extremely convoluted, leaving me feeling that I’d been cheated out of important details along the way.

[Juan Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

This a good mystery story. However the final explanation is too complicated and makes the plot hard to believe.