“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.”
