Reading: Thus Was Adonis Murdered

[white_hart]

I bought a Kindle copy of Sarah Cauldwell's Thus Was Adonis Murdered a couple of years ago after legionseagle recommended it, and decided to start reading it last week after it came up in the books thread on fail_fandomanon. I wish I hadn't waited so long to read it, because it was an utter delight, although on the other hand it was absolutely the perfect thing to read at the end of a long Michaelmas Term in a long and difficult year.

Thus Was Adonis Murdered is a cosy (I might almost say frothy) murder mystery, focusing on a group of young barristers, one of whom is accused of murdering a man she met on holiday in Venice. Most of the action actually takes place in London, as her colleagues read her letters and conduct investigations remotely, advised and guided by the narrator, Professor Hilary Tamar, an utterly Oxford donnish Oxford don whose gender is never revealed. It's wonderfully witty and arch and simultaneously an engaging mystery and an absolute hoot. It reminded me a bit of Edmund Crispin's Gervase Fen novels, except without the casual misogyny which really put me off The Case of the Gilded Fly. I will definitely be buying and reading Cauldwell's other novels, and already feel sad that she only wrote four.

Comments

[nineveh_uk]

For some reason I had always thought that Hilary Tamar was a trendy Canadian university don! I am going to have to recalibrate my mental image.

[white_hart]

Goodness, no! They are an Oxford medievalist (legal history) with a turn of phrase not entirely unreminiscent of a certain Faculty Board Chair of our mutual acquaintance.

[nineveh_uk]

I've realised that I might have confused them with Amanda Cross's books, which actually are about a female academic, though possibly an American one (I've only read one), which would explain my complete wrongness, though it is still very confusing to learn the truth.

[white_hart]

Ah, that could be it. I have one of those (No Word From Winifred), which I bought because it was set in Oxford, but I gather it gets everything terribly Wrong so haven't dared try it.