Thus Was Adonis Murdered

by Sarah Caudwell

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 261
Series: Hilary Tamar #1
Rating:

Synopsis:

When her personal copy of the current Finance Act is found a few metres away from a body, young barrister Julia Larwood finds herself caught up in a complex fight against the Inland Revenue. Set to have a vacation away from her home life and the tax man, Julia takes a trip with her art-loving boyfriend. However, all is not what it seems. Could he in fact be an employee of the establishment she has been trying to escape from? And how did her romantic luxurious holiday end in murder?

Sarah Caudwell’s Thus Was Adonis Murdered suddenly seemed to be everywhere for me, for a couple of months at the end of 2024. I love a good mystery (though I’m often most drawn to older mysteries), so I was curious about all the praise and decided to give it a shot, although I was a bit worried by it being characterised as funny — sometimes that means slapstick or embarrassment squick, which I wouldn’t gel very well with.

It’s not that. It’s witty and light in tone, though sometimes leans a bit too heavily on “Julia is weirdly stupid about a lot of things” to be quite comfortable for me. The cast of characters is fun, though I probably won’t remember how to tell them apart by the time I read the sequel, because somehow their names wouldn’t stick in my head. (Or rather, which name belonged with which character.) I suspect it’s the kind of book that some non-Brits would find very charming for being “British humour”.

What I found really interesting was that Hilary Tamar does almost all the mystery-solving from a distance, and the characters we follow are mostly kept up to date from a distance, receiving evidence via letters from Julia (the suspect) and reports from people who have gone to the scene of the crime. Despite it being set in Italy, it feels like the reader never leaves London, and yet it doesn’t feel like missing out on the action. Part of that is the wittiness and banter, I’d say, and the letters help with immediacy as well.

If I’d described this to myself beforehand, I’m not sure I’d have picked it up just based on a description of how the story is told, the wittiness, etc — but as it is, I did pick it up, and loved it, and I’m eager for the second book.

Rating: 4/5