I read Hilary Tamar #3 for the European Challenge 2024.
The Sirens Sang of Murder – Sarah Caudwell
Author Caudwelll loved to travel and set her mysteries in European locations. This story is set in Monte Carlo, London and the Channel Islands, the group of British dependency islands in the English Channel, off the coast of France. The largest, Jersey, is known among ordinary people for its beaches and cliff trails but among the rich and voluntarily obscure as a tax haven.
Attorney Caudwell brings her deep professional knowledge of “planning” taxes to this mystery in order to mystify the reader and satirize the tax-evasion industry. She quotes a fictitious travel zine passed hand to hand among tax-avoidance professionals that gives advice about lodging, dining, and sightseeing in tax havens such as the Channel Islands and Caymans. Indeed, she has one of her characters, a tax lawyer, in a faux naïve fashion, observe that when it comes to taxes, there are many people and their enablers who do not seem to know right from wrong.
Caudwell’s recurring characters are middle-aged Oxford don Hilary Tamar and four young London barristers: Cantrip, Selena, Ragwort, and Julia. Julia is a wonderful comic creation who starred in The Shortest Way to Hades. In this one Julia takes a backseat to Cantrip, a handsome guy, who finds himself in trouble deep in the Channel Islands and Monte Carlo. Cantrip’s uncle, Colonel Cantrip, shows up in London and his ruffian ways will call to mind eccentric Uncle Mathew in The Pursuit of Love.
Another funny aside is Caudwell’s satire on sentimental novels. Julia and Cantrip are collaborating on a romantic thriller. “...it seems to us that the readers who want fiction to be like life are considerably outnumbered by those who would like life to be like fiction.” The samples from this proposed novel are hilarious.
The four Hilary Tamar mysteries were so delightful and clever that the reader thinks it a great pity that their author passed away in the year 2000 when she was only 60 years of age.
I'd forgotten part of this was set in Monte Carlo. I may have to poach it for myself for the European Reading Challenge this year. I've read it before but it's been long enough, and yes, it would have been lovely had she written more.
ReplyDeleteI've also got a copy of Ali and Nino from the library, so I've got another ERC poach in the works... ;-)