Julia's unhappy relationship with Inland Revenue was due to her omission, during four years of modestly successful practice at the Bar, to pay any income tax. The truth is, I think, that she did not, in her heart of hearts, really believe in income tax. It was a subject which she had studied for examinations and on which she had thereafter advised a number of clients: she naturally did not suppose, in these circumstances, that it had anything to do with real life.I think it may have been
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liadnan or
legionseagle who first mentioned the legally-themed mystery novels of Sarah Caudwell. A good outline is
given here on Caudwell's Wikipedia page and the premise seemed intriguing enough - especially in view of the very positive comments I'd seen on the books - for me to order the first in the series,
Thus Was Adonis Murdered.
I am very glad I did. Even in a year where I've read
Reamde and the whole of
A Song of Ice and Fire so far published,
Thus Was Adonis Murdered is likely, I suspect, to remain one of my most memorable reads. It helps of course that I am familiar with the world of English barristers, which is not so very far even now from Caudwell's depiction of it in the late-1970s setting of the book. I am by no means sure that all readers will be snorting in mirth
quite so much as I was, but by heavens, Caudwell nails it:
Henry is the Clerk at 62 New Square. From references which will from time to time be made to him some of my readers, unfamiliar with the system, may infer that Selena and the rest are employed by Henry under a contract more or less equivalent of one of personal servitude. I should explain that this is not the case: they employ Henry. It is Henry's function, in exchange for ten per cent of their earnings, to deal on their behalf with the outside world: to administer, manage and negotiate; to extol their merits, gloss over their failings, justify their fees and extenuate their delays; to flatter those clients whose patronage is most lucrative; to write reproachfully to those who delay payment for more than two years or so; to promise with equal conviction in the same morning that six separate sets of papers will be the first to receive attention. By the outside world, I mean, of course, solicitors: nothing could be more improper than for a member of the English Bar to have dealings, without the intervention of a solicitor, with a member of the general public.Caudwell's style is one which, I suspect, you will love or loathe. Her characters are so arch you could construct a treatise on architecture out of them, whilst the extent to which much of the first two-thirds of the book comprises letters from one character being read out and sardonically dissected by her friends may test the patience of those accustomed to more dynamic plotting. But for those who find Caudwell to their taste, there is a rich feast indeed. Few novels feature seduction via the Finance Act, or indeed detailed expositions of the tax implications of domicile that nonetheless drive a key part of the plot. And any graduates of Oxford are likely to enjoy the regular barbs aimed at those who studied at less, well, Oxonian universities:
Cantrip is a Cambridge man – it is not always easy to understand what he says. ‘Nobbled? By whom, Cantrip? Or, to adopt the Cambridge idiom, who by?’At times the writing can feel old-fashioned: Caudwell's female characters are almost invariably referred to by their forenames, while males go by surname alone. In other respects though
Thus Was Adonis Murdered is almost surprisingly liberal; gay relationships, or the possibility of them, are taken for granted, as is casual pleasure-seeking sex. (A number of reviews I found commented on the extent to which Caudwell consciously inverts expectations of male-female seduction; the character of Julia bemoans at length the necessity to flatter a man's mind in order to get access to his body.)
Talking of sex, or rather gender, another oft-remarked-upon aspect of
Thus Was Adonis Murdered is the care that Caudwell takes never to specify whether Professor Hilary Tamar is male or female. I am confident that there are reams of analysis and speculation on this point; for my part, I found myself picturing Tamar as a woman, albeit a rather asexual one.
One oddity, given Caudwell's background as a barrister, is that she has Tamar refer to one of the younger characters as Tamar's former pupil. In the context of the Bar, that would normally imply that Tamar was the barrister who had trained said character as an apprentice, but it's made clear that Tamar's knowledge of law ends in the early medieval period and that she/he is a purely academic lawyer. So why not say 'student' - is this, perhaps, the Oxford idiom?
(As a legal aside, Caudwell is quite prescient when, in Chapter 13, she has Selena muse about the scope of overturning the arrangement she suspects Kenneth has with Eleanor as an abuse of bargaining power against a young artist. Although the ball had already been set rolling in this respect in
Macaulay v Schroeder Music Publishing Co. Ltd [1974] 1 W.L.R. 1308 it was not until a string of cases in the early 1990s - involving artists such as George Michael, the Stone Roses and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, that the doctrine really established itself. Given that
Thus Was Adonis Murdered is set in 1977 - see the newswire report quoted in Chapter 5 - one likes to imagine that Selena went on to do quite well for herself representing exploited young pop stars.)
The mystery itself - who killed the handsome young Inland Revenue employee whose murder Julia is suspected of during a holiday in Venice - is tied up nicely, with a twist that one
might have seen coming with a lot of careful thought. I have already placed orders for the next two books in the series, and anticipate regretting that Caudwell died before writing more than four.
