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Dorothy Bowers produced five books in the 1930s and 1940s and was accepted into the higher echelons of crime writing when she was inducted into the Crime Club in 1948 -- unfortunately she died in that same year. She was then forgotten until, in recent years, her books have been reprinted. The style of this book is different from the modern style but really she should rather be compared to her contemporaries like Agatha Christie not to current writers. Interestingly there are now writers deliberately writing books set in the mid-20th century as historical detective fiction. Dorothy Bowers effortlessly produces the background of an English village in 1947 as you would expect. What is most striking is that she can show the attitudes of that day so clearly, as well as the physical surroundings. The story concerns the village of Long Greeting which has experienced five suicides in the vicinity within months. Miss Tidy, owner of the Minerva, a combined hat, tea, and beauty shop, visits the police to suggest her interpretation of events following her receipt of a poison pen letter. Soon after a body is found in the teashop. Detective Inspector Raikes of Scotland Yard is already on the scene and he investigates with local Superintendent Lecky. Much of their investigation is in the form of interviews of various people who live in the village or work in the hat/tea/beauty shop. The cast of characters is listed at the beginning of the book with some indication of appearance and attitude. This was a common feature of 1930s detective stories but it does limit the possible identities of those responsible for the various crimes. The story moves jerkily by modern standards and there is little further development of the characters from the thumbnail sketches in the introductory list. The depth comes in the attribution of motives to some of those characters -- they are good examples of the mid-20th century attitudes that we have lost. I enjoyed the setting -- you don't see many hat or teashops in England now!
Reviewed by Jennifer S. Palmer, August 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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