A Deed Without a Name
Categories: Books, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Mystery



Dimensions: 5.06 x 0.64 x 7.81 inches
ISBN-13: 978-1899000128
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1899000127
Publisher: Moonstone Press
Print length: 301 pages
Publication date: May 3, 2021
subtitle: Paperback – May 3, 2021
author: Dorothy Bowers
review: Editorial Reviews Review In A Deed Without a Name Miss Dorothy Bowers tells of the murder during the black-out of a young man already the victim of mysterious attempts on his life, of the disappearance of a millionaire, and shows, with a high degree of constructive skill, how Chief Inspector Pardoe adds one faint indication to another to prove that the two crimes are closely connected. Probably most readers will soon guess the identity of the murderer, but the clues that provide the solution to the mystery are devised and followed up with an ingenuity certain to keep those readers always interested. Especially admirable is the way in which the murderer's name is given early in the story - for those, that is, who have the necessary insight and knowledge. --E.R. Punshon "Crime & Mystery" Good intellectual titillator in an adroit follow-up of Shadows Before. Innocuous Archy Mitford nosed into another murder and paid the price. Slow moving Pardoe of the Yard pulverizes all the clues -- and runs down blackmail into kidnapping into murder -- and eventually gets his man. -- "Kirkus Reviews" "Curiosity is the test of detective stories. If it is continually whetted all faults can be forgiven. If it is not, then all graces of style and character tend to remove the novel into another class. Comparatively few of the goods that bear the label are "detective" through and through; the boys' book of adventure, the nursemaids' novelette, the tale of mystery and terror, the drawing-room melodrama, the tough school's callisthenics and all other types of popular fiction mongrelize the strain. There is almost a thrill of discovery in recognizing the pure breed and this is what Miss Bowers gives us in "A Deed Without A Name." She begins quietly and unpromisingly with a young man of Chelsea whose tales of poisoned chocolates, a push in the back on a railway platform and a narrow escape from being run down in the street suggest a persecution complex or self-dramatization that he will grow out of. Of course, he would climb a wall and let himself in by a back-door rather than enter his home in the usual way. And then the crimes begin. Miss Bowers' story is exciting because it steers clear of familiar ways. There is no Fuss over detectives' personal appearance or idiosyncrasies and though she cannot overcome the prevailing passion for apt quotations she keeps them for chapter headings instead of dialogue. Her business is strictly the unravelling of a murder mystery. Plodding police methods are unassisted by "hunches", amateur or professional. The task is tackled like washing-day by constable, sergeant and inspector, acting on information received from a prying housemaid. Whether you spot the guilty party or not make little difference. The very nature of the crime has an interest that forbids the skipping of odd chapters. Miss Bowers brings a fresh box of tricks on the stage just when the audience was becoming jaded. Her illusions may amount to the old business of vanishing live 'uns and producing dead 'uns, but they seem new. She ranks with the best." --The Times Literary Supplement About the Author Dorothy Violet Bowers (1902-1948) was born in Leominster, the daughter of a confectioner. The family moved to Monmouth in 1903 where her father ran his own bakery until he retired in 1936. Educated at the Monmouth High School for Girls, Bowers received a scholarship for Oxford and, displaying the dogged tenacity evident throughout her short life, sat the Latin entrance exam three times before she was finally accepted. Women had only recently been able to get degrees at Oxford and Bower's sister Evelyn also joined her there, which suggests a familial focus on education. In 1926, Bowers graduated from the Society of Oxford Home-Students (now St Anne's College) with a third class honours degree in Modern History, and spent the next few years pursuing a career as a history teacher. Subsequent letters to her college principal documented her worries about family finances (my father....our university careers have been a heavy expense to him.) and her desire to break away from Monmouth (I have a dread of finding work in a small pleasant county-town such as this. The temptation to crystallize would be too great.) Temporary jobs teaching history and English did not inspire her and she turned to writing; letters to friends documented the slow, uphill battle to get published. During this time, she supplemented her income by compiling crossword puzzles for John O'London Weekly under the pseudonym Daedalus. Bowers published four Inspector Pardoe novels in rapid succession: Postscript to Poison (1938), Shadows Before (1939), Deed without a Name (1940) and Fear For Miss Betony (1941). Fear For Miss Betony was heralded by the Times of London as the best mystery of 1941, stating Every page bears witness to a brain of uncommon powers. 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, with Pardoe replaced by another Scotland Yard detective, Raikes. 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.