This book is essentially the platonic ideal of what I wish murder mysteries to be; in this I am continually disappointed.

Julia Larwood, accidental murder suspect, learned space case, over-educated hot mess express, is such a treasure; though I am not a hypersexual lady barrister, rarely have I felt as validated by a female character. I, too, am worried for Desdemona. ( )

cool, enjoyable mystery. the denouement wasn't perfect but it worked well enough and I think you can take a good guess at it from the clues although it requires a couple of guesses to actually solve.

the big appeal though is the character writing and humor. the writing is consistently funny-rarely laugh out loud but regularly brings a smile to my face. the characters are lively and the dialogue is great. also one of the main characters is a very active bisexual woman and two other major characters are gay men in a relationship and it's spoken of as normal, which is nice, and they're written pretty well. there are quite a few fully fleshed out women characters in the story who are all different but accomplished in their own ways. it's closer to a cozy mystery in that the main characters are never in any danger but the action is still interesting. there's also a lot of entertaining digressions on the subject of things like art history and Italian architecture which never seem elitist, just presented entertainingly and all as part of the story, with pretty much all knowledge needed to understand them given to the reader.

overall a highly entertaining book, maybe a few faults as a mystery and not perfect but a really fun (well the ending is really sad) and well written book I'd highly recommend if you like that sort of thing

one thing I will say is that I don't really understand what year it's set in, it seems to be all over the place. but maybe that's part of the point ( )

Great entertainment! ( )

My librarian friend suggested this one to me - loaned me his personal copy. He said, smiling: "It's very VEDDY British!" And he was definitely not wrong. Set in a law practice with a cast of young barristers, narrated by their mentor, a law professor, it crackles with a certain brittle, arch, snappish dialog like something out of Wodehouse or Coward, couched in verbiage that truly deserves the epithet "sesquipedalian." Now, I wallow in 19th century literature and am not afraid of polysyllables, but this took even me some work to get used to. The characters are "bright young things," and don't seem especially likable, but after a while, you start to enjoy them - they are smart, loyal, funny, and brave. The plot involves one of their number (and she IS really annoying!) on an art tour in Venice, pursuing an impossibly "enchanting" young man, but ends up accused of his murder. It is convoluted, and unfortunately much of the story is told in the form of letters our art tourist writes to her colleagues back home, who provide some relief in their eye-rolling, snarky commentary on her letters and behavior. Once you settle into the idea that the entire style and tone of this book is a send-up of "Golden Age" 1930's sorts of mystery stories, it can be rather fun. And having been published in the 1980's, Caudwell has fun with smart, competent women (one in the eye for that old fart Rumpole); one or two quite charming men (and some damaged galoots), the slimier side of the art market, and picking apart some sexist tropes from the genre she is playing with.

As it happens, I had just been perusing Martin Edwards's massive The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators compendium. One footnote mentioned Christopher Isherwood, who based his character Sally Bowles (most famously played in Cabaret by Liza Minelli) on a woman he knew called Jean Ross. Ross went on to raise a daughter, a brilliant legal scholar and barrister, named Sarah. She wrote detective novels under the name Sarah Caudwell. They may be an acquired taste, with a very definite style, but worth a shot if you think you might like that kind of thing. ( )

Professor Hilary Tamar, Don of Oxford specializing in the history of law, is friendly with the young barristers at 62 New Square, Lincoln’s Inn: flighty Julia, mellifluous Selina, angelic Ragwort, sardonic Cantrip (he in possession of the unfortunate degree from, sadly, Cambridge) and slightly older Timothy Shepherd. When Julia finds herself in a spot while in Venice - the “spot” being a suspicion that she is a murderer - her stalwart companions leap to her defence - well, as long as the leap isn’t too far past a local pub or three - and Hilary is there to both guide them and capture the events for posterity…. I ran across the four novels in this series back in the mid-1990s (although they were published in the 1980s), but had not re-read any of them for a long, long time. The writing style takes a little getting used to - it’s a very English upper-class style, wherein the characters are constantly pointing out each other’s faults while apparently heaping effusive amounts of praise on each other - but once one makes the effort, it’s utterly hilarious. (An example, early on; Hilary writes: “On my first day in London, I made an early start. Reaching the Public Record Office not much after ten, I soon secured the papers needed for my research and settled in my place. I became, as is the way of the scholar, so deeply absorbed as to lose all consciousness of my surroundings or of the passage of time. When at last I came to myself, it was almost eleven and I was quite exhausted….”). Often compared to the Rumpole of the Bailey series, this set is updated to the more-or-less modern world of the 1980s, with mentions of fluid sexuality abounding, and the results are quite delicious. Ms. Caudwell died of cancer in 2000; otherwise, one could envisage this series continuing on into the present day with no loss of enjoyment; I’m looking forward to re-reading Book Two already! Recommended. ( )