Fear for Miss Betony

“Evil and good are nothing in themselves, they are only instrumental to the full life, to power, power—power…”

Emma Betony is content to live out her remaining years in a home for decayed gentlewomen when she receives an urgent appeal for help from a former student. Grace Aram is running Makeways, a struggling boarding school for girls, newly located in a former nursing home in Dorset. But Grace isn’t interested in Miss Betony’s teaching skills—she wants a trusted friend to help identify the culprit behind a series of troubling events, including the possible poisoning of one of the home’s remaining patients. What Miss Betony finds is an overwhelming sense of fear on

the part of Makeways’ inhabitants, and clues that lead her to the Great Ambrosio, a charismatic fortune-teller with more than one trick up his sleeve. First published in 1941, Fear for Miss Betony marks the final appearance of Chief Inspector Dan Pardoe—but it is Miss Betony herself who fights through fear and solves the case. Contemporary critics proclaimed the book an instant classic, with an ingenious plot.



DOROTHY BOWERS (1902–48) was a champion of “fair play” mysteries, in which all the clues are cunningly displayed within the story. The daughter of a bakery owner, she attended Oxford University, and later became a History teacher, supplementing her income by compiling crossword puzzles. A member of the Detection Club, Bowers wrote five crime thrillers before her early death from tuberculosis: Postscript to Poison (1938), Shadows

Before (1939), A Deed Without a Name (1940), Fear for Miss Betony(1941) and The Bells at Old Bailey (1947).