I’d first heard of Sarah Caudwell in the late, lamented Noah Stewart’s “200 Authors I Would Recommend” series.* I took note of his praise, thought that Caudwell would be nice to read sometime, but never got around to it. Still, I consistently heard praise for Caudwell’s writing from various mystery fans (including the host of this blog) and decided to finally give her a shot. Caudwell “studied law at Oxford, was called to the Chancery Bar, and practiced law for several years at London’s Lincoln Inn,” which is the setting for much of her debut. Sadly she only managed three novels, one contribution to the round-robin The Perfect Murder, a play, The Madman’s Advocate, and a handful of short stories before her death at 60, with one more published posthumously. Thus Was Adonis Murdered was her debut.
Adonis, like the rest of her books, is mostly an epistolary novel. The letters come from Julia Larwood, a barrister who is, regarding tax law, a sensible and level-headed young woman and a brain-damaged magpie in every other aspect of her life: “looking—as, indeed, she does at the best of times—like one of the more disheveled heroines of Greek tragedy.” She writes a series of letters detail her vacation to Venice on an“Art Lover’s Holiday,” for the edification and amusement of her law partners. Julia is getting a first-hand look at the city’s historical buildings. But she’s really looking forward to laying eyes on attractive men. Sadly, they are in short supply. One is married to a quiet, pale lady, and another is an obnoxious ex-colonel who takes her as his confidant, much to her horror. One other member of her group, Ned, gets her attention immediately, but he has a major personality flaw, a characteristic that almost destroys her attraction as soon as she learns of it: He is an employee of the Department of Inland Revenue,“a vast conspiracy having as its sole objective her physical, mental, and financial ruin.” (Julia didn’t pay taxes for four years.)
While doubtless this blog’s readers are recoiling in horror as such a revelation, it gets worse. Julia’s coworkers learn of an incoming news report. It seems that an employee of the Department of Inland Revenue was stabbed to death in Venice, and a British tourist is being held for questioning.
Caudwell uses the epistolary format very creatively here. Our heroes are getting Julia’s letters after the murder, meaning that they (and the reader) have to dig through otherwise innocuous letters to find foreshadowing—unintentional on Julia’s part—of the murder to come. Caudwell creates an interesting effect as the cast do what little investigation they can while slowly getting a more complete picture of the other members of the tour group and their dynamics. There’s marital problems, possible gay lovers, a thief lurking about, and more. But what provoked Ned’s murder? He was found stabbed in his bed after having sex with Julia, and the circumstances are a borderline impossible crime. A group of chambermaids were watching the entrance to the annex where Ned’s room was, and they reported seeing no one but him and Julia enter or leave. Though it’s worth noting that Caudwell doesn’t make a huge production about it. It’s just part of the noose around Julia’s neck.
Caudwell’s style is very old-fashioned, arch and witty. I feared that it would make the book insufferable, but once you get into the flow it’s quite an easy read. There are some good turns of phrase, (“The effect was as of attempting to camouflage an armored tank by icing it with pink sugar,”) and a couple of laugh-out-loud moments (“Barristers Shot in Fulham Fracas”).
I admit I was worried that the writing style would make it hard for me to remember the characters, but that wasn’t a huge problem. The suspects are well-differentiated for how little "on-screen" page time they get. The same cannot be said for the investigators. The main detective is Professor of History Hilary Tamar, but the good professor is almost a background character for the first half of the book until the other suspects return to England. After that, Professor Tamar takes a more direct hand in the investigation but still remains a bit of a cypher (which, in fairness, is intentional on Caudwell’s part). Julia’s fellow barristers are great fun to watch in action, but I could not for the life of me tell them apart, barring Selena, because she’s a woman, and Timothy, because he’s more directly related to the plot and ends up in Venice to take up Julia’s defense. But I did enjoy their antics.
Caudwell plays the mystery game with tongue-in-cheek. There’s an amusing moment where Caudwell-through-Tamar explicitly says that one part of the mystery is a red herring with nothing to do with the murder (not that it stops the professor from lying to one of the investigators about it). The characters regularly discuss the crime and propose plausible theories for their own personal culprits. Tamar even assures the reader about halfway through that the crime is perfectly solvable at that point. Is it? Sort of. Caudwell does something odd here. There’s a subplot that she clues very well indeed; while I didn’t pick up on the clues, I did notice an odd sequence that Caudwell draws attention to and that is important for the subplot. When I looked back, I quickly saw how it all worked out. But the main mystery doesn’t feel as well clued, hinging on the reader picking up on very small details. Even Professor Tamar admits that the solution depends on a lucky-but-educated guess. It’s a good solution to the mystery, but I’d be surprised if most readers truly solve it, as opposed to making a good guess based on their experience with mystery fiction. That being said, Caudwell does work the epistolary format into the solution in a clever way but dare say no more.
In the end, I enjoyed this book. It’s a clever and literate mystery that has something for both casual and hardcore mystery fans. It was a very pleasant read, and I quite liked it. Recommended.
Other Reviews: Mysteries Ahoy, Playing Detective, Mystery*File, FictionFan's Book Reviews, Clothes in Books.
*Sadly I could not access the page; it seems his blog is defunct.
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