“It was not until the fifth death in Long Greeting that Miss Tidy made up her mind to go to the police.” The owner of the Minerva, a combination hat, tea, and beauty shop, Miss Tidy is a tiny, white-haired lady whose Dresden-doll daintiness conceals a cold and calculating heart. As everyone in the village is quick to point out, she is not a person who inspires affection in others. Five people had died in Long Greeting and its environs in the past months, all by their own hands, and their deaths are the talk of the small village. Although Miss Tidy doesn’t realize it until she makes her statement to the police, Detective-Inspector Raikes of Scotland Yard has already been called down to Long Greeting to work with the local constabulary, in particular Superintendent Lecky. The villagers don’t take kindly at first to an outsider in their midst, but as poison-pen letters and then murder follow upon the inexplicable suicides, they gradually begin sharing their secrets with Raikes and Lecky, until finally the sharp-witted detectives are able to make some sense of the puzzling events. A superb example of the classic English village mystery, The Bells of Old Bailey is the last book Dorothy Bowers published. She died at the age of 46 of tuberculosis the following year, 1948, shortly after her induction into England’s prestigious Detection Club.

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