Sarah Caudwell’s Thus Was Adonis Murdered

An Appreciation by Shari Randall

 

As you may have guessed from my blogs, I am a fan of classic mysteries. I’m not the only one. Did you catch the reference to John Dickson Carr’s classic locked-room mystery The Hollow Man in the new Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man movie?

 

My latest foray into the classic mystery vault is Thus Was Adonis Murdered (1981) by Sarah Caudwell. Caudwell, whose real name was Sarah Cockburn, was a British barrister and law professor who was instrumental in opening the once exclusively male Oxford Union debating society to women. Her legal background and deep erudition are on display in the novel, but don’t let that scare you off. This is one entertaining read.

 

The plot? Young barrister Julia Larwood travels to Venice with a group called the Art Lovers. She sets her romantic sights on one of the group, and falls under suspicion when the young man is found murdered in their luxurious Venetian hotel. When her friends at the law office hear of her arrest, they work together to clear her name.

 

One would give one’s eye teeth to hang out with Caudwell’s characters, the witty and urbane denizens of Lincoln’s Inn Fields law office, and perhaps give even more to spend time in Venice with them. One feels one’s vocabulary and IQ score improve simply by turning the pages. One also finds oneself using “one” more than is wise or necessary in 2026.

 

But I digress. The investigation progresses through a series of letters that Julia sends to her friends back in London, an almost book-within-a-book effect that is utterly charming.  Don’t we all love to read someone else’s mail? I couldn’t wait for another letter from Julia. Her entire aim during the trip is to seduce the Adonis of the title. (Not a spoiler; she makes the goal plain in her first letter.) Will Julia succeed? Don’t worry, much is left to the imagination, but still the frankness of Julia’s pursuit is amusing and refreshing.

 

Elegant, arch, mannered, acerbic, witty…I find myself losing track of the actual plot, distracted by the sheer style and voice of the narrator, Hilary Tamar, an Oxford don. In four books, Caudwell never reveals the sex or age of Tamar. She said in an interview with Mystery Scene magazine, “I knew from the outset Hilary must be an Oxford don – but of equivocal sex and even equivocal age, resembling that precise, donnish kind of individual who starts being elderly at the age of twenty-two.”

 

Those of us without a first in Classics will have our horizons broadened by allusions to Catullus, Michelangelo, and the Byzantine empire but, again, don’t let that scare you. If you’re looking for a book with rare style and wit, offering the sheer pleasure of immersing one’s self (sorry!) in the British TV fantasy world of dons, barristers, and Bermuda shorts-wearing army majors, this is the book for you.

SHARI RANDALL is the author of the Lobster Shack Mystery series, and, as Meri Allen, the Ice Cream Shop Mystery series. Her latest short story appears in the new Destination Murders anthology, Murder in the Graveyard.