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.

 

 

 

On Writing by Julie Mulhern

In January of this year, I made the heart-stoppingly terrifying decision to quit my day job and write full-time.

For years, I’d been one of those writers who rose before the chickens. I got so I didn’t need the alarm at five in the morning. I was already up, fingers poised over the keyboard, writing. At seven, I’d switch gears and go to work. My series, The Country Club Murders, had a home with a publisher I adored. The books were selling well. But I wanted more.

I dreamed of making a living writing.

Therein lies one of the myths of publishing and one of my first lessons. Before I was published, I was certain writers made buckets of money. Granted, not everyone could earn like James Patterson or Janet Evanovich, but I was certain that mid-listers were making a comfortable living. After I was published, I grasped the math.

When an author sells an e-book on Amazon or Kobo or iBooks or Barnes & Noble, the store takes a cut. Percentages vary based on pricing, but the store makes its money first.

I have a publisher who collects the royalties from my Country Club Murders book sales. The publisher gets a cut.

I also have an agent. She too gets a percentage of my earnings.

The percentages are worse for print.

At the end of the day, I make less money than the bookseller or publisher.

My options seemed clear. If wanted to make a living writing, I had two choices. Either I figured out how to be James Patterson or I kept more of the royalties generated by my books.

Which is why I dipped my toe into self-publishing.

Starting a new series is tough. Tougher than the first time because now I know the pitfalls. The world is set in the first book. The characters are created. Their backstories are revealed. There’s a lot to think about.

The first book in the Country Club Murders takes place in June, 1974. The second book is set in September of that year. Without thinking, I gave away a whole season. If I wanted the Country Club Murders to stay firmly rooted in the 70s, I had to slow time. Now, Ellison finds bodies on a near weekly basis and time inches by rather than leaps.

Those first few days of being a full-time writer, I sat in front of the computer and stared at the screen. World? Characters? Plot? What had I done? I’d left the security of a job I’d had for ten years to create, and I couldn’t create. Maybe my creativity was limited to the hours of five to seven in the morning. Maybe, I’d write something so terrible not only would it bomb, but it would take the County Club Murders with it in a fiery explosion of awfulness.

I’d dreamed of effortless creativity. The reality was a butt-in-chair job that required serious thought. And slowly—too slowly—the words came. A character came into focus. A world was created. A plot took shape.

Not that everything was harder. Somewhere in the first few years of writing, I found my voice. That didn’t change. Nor did the nuts and bolts of building a story need to be relearned. Those hard-won lessons about active writing, point of view, and specificity still applied.

So, two months late (according to the ridiculously over-optimistic schedule I set for myself), I self-published my first book, Fields’ Guide to Abduction. It didn’t bomb.

Here’s a second publishing lesson, no one can make a living off of one book. But—but—I can see the roadmap for the future and chasing a dream is a risk worth taking.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Julie Mulhern is the USA Today bestselling author of The Country Club Murders and the Poppy Fields Adventures.

A Kansas City native, she grew up on a steady diet of Agatha Christie. She spends her spare time whipping up gourmet meals for her family, working out at the gym and finding new ways to keep her house spotlessly clean--and she's got an active imagination. Truth is--she's an expert at calling for take-out, she grumbles about walking the dog, and the dust bunnies under the bed have grown into dust lions.

An Interview with Susan Wittig Albert by E. B. Davis

Max Mantel, the killer McQuaid put away years ago, has broken out of Huntsville Prison

and appears to be headed for Pecan Springs. McQuaid knows there's only one way to

stop the vengeful convict—set a trap with himself as bait.

China wants to stay by her husband's side and keep him from harm. But McQuaid insists

that she get out of town and go to the Last Chance Olive Ranch, where she's

agreed to teach a workshop on herbs.

When China and her best friend arrive at the ranch, she learns the owner, Maddie Haskell,

has her own troubles. She inherited the ranch and olive oil business from the

late matriarch, Eliza Butler, but Eliza's nephew is contesting the will.

While China throws herself into helping Maddie, McQuaid's plan backfires when Mantel executes a countermove he never saw coming. Now McQuaid's life is not the

only one at stake—and this time may really be his last chance...

http://www.abouthyme.com/China

When I contacted Susan Wittig Albert for an interview about her newest release, I couldn’t understand her confusion. What didn’t I know? She had two new releases, one non-fiction scheduled for March, The General’s Women, and in April, The Last Chance Olive Ranch, her latest and twenty-fifth China Bayles mystery. Being prolific must have its difficulties, but it’s one I wish I had. Next time I ask for an interview, I’ll make sure to be more specific.

I’m in awe of Susan’s complete book list, which includes college textbooks, adult nonfiction and fiction, and YA fiction. The fiction is spread among various genres and subgenres. Even though I’ve read two of her series, I had no idea that she wrote two Nancy Drew mysteries under the Carolyn Keene pseudonym and with her husband, Bill, wrote three more. They also wrote two Hardy Boy mysteries.

After writing academic books during the 1970s, Susan wrote fiction under various pseudonyms in the 1980s and 90s some alone and some with Bill. In 1992, Susan’s first China Bayles mystery, Thyme of Death, was released by Berkley, a relationship that now spans four series. From 1994-2006, Susan and Bill wrote a mystery series under the name Robin Paige. The series contains twelve books, which were set during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. The Beatrix Potter series (I loved) was written from 2004—2011. Berkley’s 2010 release of The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree, the first Darling Dahlias and the newest of Susan’s mystery series, is set in a depression-era Alabama town.

Please welcome Susan Wittig Albert to WWK.                                                         E. B. Davis   

How many hours per day do you write?

I keep a normal workday like everybody else: 8 to 5, with time off for lunch, laundry, necessary housekeeping, etc. Publishing and online chores take up a couple of morning hours, but I try to get to the book by 10 or 10:30 and keep at it for the rest of the day—interrupted by those pesky chores.

How much detail do you plot?

Not a lot. I try to start with a matrix of material that’s rich and dense enough to yield several interesting stories—and then trust the characters and the stories to show me where they want to go. I love discovering pieces of story that I hadn’t planned and didn’t know were there: if I’m surprised, the reader will be surprised, too.

You write multiple series concurrently. How do you keep it all straight?

It’s not hard. Each series has its own voice, character ensemble, settings, themes—and they’re all very different. The China Bayles series is contemporary; the rest have been historicals in one period or another. No chance of getting mixed up.

One of the aspects of the China Bayles series I like is that you follow the husband, McQuaid, and wife, China, in different chapters. They’ve often worked on the same mystery, but they do so separately using different methods and channels. My husband and I used to do that, but recently we’ve been forced to work together as you do with your husband on occasion. Does yours try to micromanage or lead you while you’re working together?

No, that’s not Bill! When we were writing the Robin Paige series, it was truly a team project, with important contributions from each of us. He liked to keep a storyboard and I liked to change it (and sometimes forgot to tell him where I was going)—that was often our biggest issue. But because we were working on the same chapters at the same time and reading each other’s work every day, we usually knew where we were. It was good teamwork, and good for the marriage.

To the first part of your question: The China Bayles series is first-person narration. That’s hard to handle in a mystery. (If you don’t think so, try it!)  The second narrator has been mostly McQuaid, but there are others. In Wormwood, for instance, characters in a Shaker village provide an alternate narration. In Widow’s Tears, there’s an entire alternate historical novel (the story of the 1900 Galveston hurricane) embedded in the mystery.

I had to laugh when Ruby admitted to China that she wanted to go to The Last Chance Olive Ranch because of a guy. Does Texas have olive ranches—I assumed they were mostly in California?

Olive ranching is a growth industry here in Texas. It’s tricky (you’ll see that when you read the novel) because of the climate—but once the trees are established, they can be productive. The Last Chance is a fairly typical olive operation, and the varieties grown on that fictional ranch are the same varieties that would be grown on a real ranch in that region. Ditto the vineyards in the book. Wine is another important Texas product.

What is the “new open carry” situation Blackie talks about to McQuaid?

Texas allows licensed gun owners to carry their handguns openly or concealed. You can openly carry a long gun (rifle, shotgun) without a license. While many rules apply (there are gun-free zones, etc.) it’s not uncommon to walk into a store and see people with holstered weapons or an AR15. Most grocery stores are gun-free zones; Walmart is gun-free. And (worst of all, IMO) state university campuses are now open-carry. I’m glad I’m not teaching.

You either shoot or do an incredible amount of research—such as knowing where to shoot at someone carrying a flashlight. Were you the primary source of this information or was the information obtained from someone else?

I think I read that particular detail somewhere (makes sense, doesn’t it?), but in general, if there’s a gun in a scene, I’ve checked it out with Bill. While I shoot, he’s the gun guy in the family. We live on 31 acres in the middle of ranching country. Guns are a fact of life here.

Would you like to see more stringent gun-control laws?

Yes, yes, yes. Absolutely. And so would China Bayles—and McQuaid. Cops everywhere hate open-carry. How can you tell a bad guy from a good guy when they’re both carry AR15s in a crowd?

McQuaid installed a hands-free cell phone system with a keyboard in his truck. He’s not sure he likes it. How have you dealt with changing technology over the course of a long-running series?

When Bill and I were writing the Robin Paige series, one of the important elements of those 12 novels were the changes in forensic technology (fingerprinting, blood typing, forensic photography, toxicology, etc.) that occurred during those years. The research was fascinating—especially because we were creating fictional crimes that would allow us to “showcase” a particular technology. My favorite is a chapter in Death at Rottingdean, where we featured a forensic autopsy using an X-ray machine—to the accompaniment of “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General.”

Writing contemporary mystery over 25 years, I’ve had to learn to deal with all sorts of changes in technology. China doesn’t have a cell phone in the first books, and doesn’t adapt quickly. At the shop, she has a website, a monthly e-letter (like mine), and uses Power Point when she’s teaching. McQuaid’s truck system is just the latest development—and in another book, he uses Google Earth to develop a plan to surprise some bad guys. Who knows what’s next?

You describe some Texas realities, such as the town of Kyle, which has expanded five times its original size due to Austin’s growth, and the area of Hill Country called Flash Flood Alley. Is Texas an extreme place?

An extreme place? Well, we’ve just had the HOTTEST February in 130 years of recordkeeping. I guess that’s extreme. And yes, Flash Flood Alley is real, and so is the out-of-control growth. But these also serve as dramatic elements in the series. The books aren’t built around lots of blood, and the ambush scene in Last Chance Olive Ranch is unusual. In my plots, the weather, the real climate, and the “extremes” of Texas life are one substitute for multiple murders and gallons of fictional blood.

In many mysteries, authors set up animosity between PIs and police. But McQuaid and Blackie don’t have that problem. You described a legal situation of Texas PIs—they’re commissioned security officers, like bounty hunters, and have the legal right to make an arrest. Really?

Yes, really.  And McQuaid and Blackie don’t feel that stereotypical animosity for a reason: they are both ex-cops with long experience on the job. They understand the kind of tough work cops do and they won’t do anything to make that tougher—they’ll make it easier, if they can. On the other hand, they also know that sometimes cops don’t do their jobs: in which case, they can come down pretty hard on them.

Do you think McQuaid’s ex will learn her lesson and stop dropping by?

I hope not. Bad-penny Sally always brings a good story with her when she shows up.

I loved your Beatrix Potter series. However, I must admit, I wanted Beatrix to tell off her parents and live freely, but I know as unrealistic as the series was—that was the very part that was realistic. How did you develop the narrator voice of that series?

The narrative voice of that series developed over 8 books and 10 years—and to tell the truth, it’s pretty uneven. It started as a usual third-person fairly objective narration, with points of view shifting among the characters. But beginning about book 3 or 4 (I really can’t remember when), I began to use the kind of “direct-to-the-reader” voice that is often used in Victorian children’s literature—a kind of benevolent school-teacherish voice that actively shapes the reader’s experience, expectations, and even moral judgments. The more I used it, the more I liked it—and felt that it fit with the period and the subject. An example from Book 7 (the “professor” is an owl and the “badger” is one of the animal characters)

I’m sure you would like to follow the professor and find out what the badger

knows about this alien airborne creature. But if you don’t mind, I think we

will catch up to the professor later. Instead, we will go over to Hill Top Farm,

where Miss Beatrix Potter has just come indoors from an afternoon in the

garden and is about to put the kettle on to boil for her own cup of tea.

That voice came from my reading of children’s books of late 19^th and early 20^th centuries: The Wind in the Willows, Water Babies, Alice in Wonderland—and of course, Beatrix Potter’s books. The Cottage Tales (that’s the name of the series) aren’t kids’ books—but they’re for readers who are still young at heart. I miss the characters in that series, but most of all I miss that voice. Fun while it lasted….

What’s next on your writing agenda?

I’ve just finished a China Bayles mystery for Berkley (Queen Anne’s Lace, 2018). I am currently working on the seventh book in the Darling Dahlias series; it will likely be published under my own imprint, Persevero Press. I’ve just published the third in a series of biographical/historical novels under that imprint. The first, A Wilder Rose (2013) is now under film option. The second, Loving Eleanor (2016), has won a fistful of awards. And the third, The General’s Women (March 2017) is just out. I expect to publish more of my own work—it gives me more control over the way the book is produced and marketed, and I enjoy that end of the writing business very much.

Are you a beach or a mountain person, Susan?

Mountain, definitely. Oh, definitely. Show me a peak and I’m on my way.