The Shortest Way to Hades

"Highly intelligent and educated half-wit" Julia goes on a holiday to Venice where she's accused of murder. Her friends back home in London, mainly barristers, take it upon themselves to solve the crime and prove Julia's innocence. It is narrated by Hilary Tamar, Oxford don of unspecified gender, and told largely although not exclusively through Julia's letters to her friends and their commentary on such. Very witty and funny, full of intelligent and only slightly eccentric people, the series about Professor Tamar is excellent.

This the third in the Hilary Tamar series, Oxford don who solves the cases brought to the professor's attention by the group of friends who work as lawyers in New Square, London. In this one, Cantrip has gone off to the Channel Islands on a tax-law case, and is indulging his love of telex machines by sending plenty back home. It's through these that Hilary and the others gain enough information to solve a mystery after a companion of Cantrips is killed.

This is the 4th and last Hilary Tamar mystery novel by Sarah Caudwell, who died in 2000. Written in first person by Professor Tamar and including a series of letters by different characters, the story is told of a financial tax mess and a series of strange deaths. Professor Tamar seems to think there is a connection, but is there?

Even though she wrote only four novels, her death was a profound loss, not only in itself but also in that it deprives us forever of learning more of Julia, Selina, Ragwort, Cantrip, Timothy and the eternally mysterious and genderless Professor Hilary Tamar. The book itself? Lovely, cosy, funny, clever, erudite, and ultimately deeply satisfying.