Sibyl in Her Grave [Turtleback]

Sarah Caudwell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2001

Hailed by critics as a master of "the most elegant and literate comedy of manners in the mystery field today," Sarah Caudwell returns to London with her redoubtable team of young barristers--Cantrip, Selena, Ragwort, and Julia--in a mystery that crackles with her uniquely bewitching blend of wit and malice.  The Sibyl in Her Grave.

Julia Larwood's aunt Regina needs help.  It seems that she and two friends pooled their modest resources and, on the advice of another friend, invested in equities.  A short-term investment in small companies.  Big risk.  Big return.  Now the tax man demands his due.  Aunt Regina is flummoxed.  They've already spent the money. How can they dig themselves out of the tax hole?  But the real question is how on earth did three amateurs make a thousand-percent profit in record time, triggering a capital gains tax twice the amount of their original investment?  Even more to the point:  Can the sin of capital gains trigger corporeal loss?

That's one for the sibyl, psychic counselor Isabella del Comino, who has offended Aunt Regina and her friends by moving into the local rectory, plowing under a cherished garden, and establishing an aviary of ravens.  When Isabella is found dead, all clues seem to lead to death by fiscal misadventure.  Was the sibyl compromising someone's bottom line?  Or was it one for the birds?

Julia calls in old friend and Oxford fellow, Professor Hilary Tamar, to follow a money trail that connects Aunt Regina and her friends to what appears to be capital fraud--and capital crime.  The two women couldn't have a better champion than the erudite Hilary, as once again Sarah Caudwell sweeps us into the scene of the crime, leaving us to ponder the greatest mystery of all.  Hilary, him--or her--self.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For mystery lovers and literary connoisseurs alike, 2000 was a year of loss. Gone are two masters of language, one with over 30 works to his credit (George V. Higgins), the other with only four (Sarah Caudwell). It is some comfort that each gave readers one last glimpse of literary skill before passing on: Higgins (At End of Day) captured the way people really speak; Caudwell captured the way many people would dearly love to speak. Her first three novels (The Shortest Way to Hades, Thus Was Adonis Murdered, The Sirens Sang of Murder) brought readers into the elegant, urbane world of Hilary Tamar, Oxford fellow and mentor to London barristers Cantrip, Selena, Ragwort, and Julia. Caudwell's last work, The Sibyl in Her Grave, continues the intoxicating blend of dry humor and genteel manners that marked her as a successor to Dorothy Sayers.

The sibyl of the title is the psychic counselor Isabella del Comino, who descends in a flurry of bad taste to the Sussex village of Parsons Haver. With an aviary of ravens, a frumpy niece, and a penchant for combining divinations and blackmail, her sudden death comes as a relief to the village's disgruntled inhabitants, including Julia's redoubtable Aunt Regina. Regina has enough to worry about: she and two friends pooled their resources and invested in equities--and made a killing. But now the tax man is demanding his share, and the money has already been spent. When she asks Julia for legal advice, Julia and her colleagues discover that both Regina's fiscal success and Isabella's death are connected to an insider-trading scandal brewing with Julia's biggest clients. Unraveling that connection, of course, is a task that falls to Hilary.

Hilary, who "labors always in the service of Scholarship," is a triumph of authorial ambiguity. After four novels, readers will be left wondering, apparently unto eternity, whether Professor Tamar is a man or a woman. Take it as a political statement if you will--or simply as another little mystery, courtesy of an author who reveled in the power of words to clarify, outline, elucidate, and obscure. --Kelly Flynn --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Published posthumously, Caudwell's final Hilary Tamar mystery finds the androgynous Oxford professor and his (or her) coterie of junior barristers untangling a complicated case of insider trading and murder. While barrister Julia Larwood is mulling over a panicky letter from her aunt, Regina Sheldon, about taxes owed on certain recent investments, her colleague, Selena Jardine, is coincidentally advising Sir Robert Renfrews, chairman of Renfrews' Bank, on the mysterious leaking of top-secret business gossip that has somehow reached Aunt Regina and her two investment cronies. The conduit of information proves to be Aunt Regina's new neighbor, Isabella del Comino, a self-styled "psychic counselor," who may be blackmailing one of two rising directors at the bank. Isabella's sudden death and the emergence of her pathetic but creepy niece, Daphne, raise concerns: did one of the bank directors murder Isabella, and will Daphne, or possibly even Aunt Regina, be next? Mining Barbara Pym country for tipsy vicars and high-strung spinsters, Caudwell has produced a droll, rather retro whodunit, updated only by the barest hint of same-sex dalliance. In addition, the young barristers have time to deconstruct wordy epistles from a suburban aunt and to natter on in stiff-upper-lip British diction about bookshelves and vacations as if they were back in the junior common room. It's all highly artificial, but Caudwell's crafty plotting and knowing wit will keep readers happily diverted. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Turtleback
• Publisher: Demco Media (July 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0606216472
• ISBN-13: 978-0606216470
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,811,498 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The last Caudwell gem, August 15, 2000

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Sibyl in Her Grave (Hardcover)

Although British author Sarah Caudwell wrote only four Hilary Tamar comedy-of-manners mysteries before her death in January, the long wait between each of them only whetted her fan's appetites. Oxford Professor Tamar's gender (as well as height, complexion, build and every other personal detail) remains a mystery in Caudwell's last, "The Sibyl In Her Grave," and the writing is as precise, elegant, urbane, witty and polished as any fan could hope.

Introducing the story, Tamar addresses the issue of personal appearance, admitting that some readers have expressed an interest. "I do not doubt, however, that these enquiries are made purely as a matter of courtesy and to take them au pied de la lettre would be as grave a solecism as to answer a polite 'How do you do, Professor Tamar?' with a full account of the state of my digestion."

Happily the narrator's reticence does not extend to the team of four young London barristers whose personal, romantic and professional doings enliven Caudwell's stories. Julia, tax expert, is concerned for her Aunt Regina who has made a truly remarkable killing in stocks and is now expected to pay tax on money already spent. Meanwhile Selena's client, a retiring merchant banker, has discovered that one of the two men vying to succeed him is guilty of insider trading - but which one?

These two threads neatly tie into the death of a despised neighbor of Regina's, a psychic whose aviary includes a pet vulture and whose household includes a most unattractive and hapless niece. The other two young barristers, Cantrip and Ragwort, supply red herrings and clues as needed and Hilary pursues this trail of coincidence to come up with several elegant solutions, each one engagingly convincing until demolished.

Dryly hilarious, elegantly polished, Caudwell is the Jane Austen of mysteries and though her books are few, each can be read and reread for the sheer delight of the writing and the intricate, comic plots.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Caudwell's Swansong, July 17, 2000

By 

JACK C. BROWN - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sibyl in Her Grave (Hardcover)

When I first stumbled upon Sarah Caudwell's mystery fiction it was as if I were encountering a sly witty persona with whom I wanted to become a good friend. But having devoured her first three novels, the greatest mystery was why this entertaining novelist had not penned more? As a result, it was a mixed blessing to learn Caudwell did indeed pen a fourth and, sadly, final novel, The Sibyl in Her Grave.

The fictional mechanism Caudwell uses to push her narrative forward still relies heavily upon a modified epistolary form. Though the narrative's letters are fascinating reading and are infused with the allure of reading someone else's personal correspondence, the reader must suspend belief as we know modern man would not sit still, even with the facility of word processing software via computer, long enough to write such fulsome, detailed and informative letters to each other about any topic, let alone suspicious deaths.

Nevertheless, The Sibyl continues the trademark wittiness of Caudwell's earlier three novels. Though her fictional landscape is littered with the requisite corpse or two, she manages to keep the reader guessing until the last chapter -- and not merely about whodunit.

What a pity there won't be more fiction from Sarah Caudwell.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Call it the new book or the last book?, August 11, 2000

By 

Jeffrey L. Barbalics "Jeff" (Cleveland, OH USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Sibyl in Her Grave (Hardcover)

I enjoyed this erudite book (as I had the other three)to the point that I wound up at an outside cafe balancing a tealight on the book so I could finish reading it after that sun had gone down over a glass of port. It is was mixed feelings that I finished it. I couldn't wait to start this new book, but, with it being Caudwell's last before her death, I was forced to remember that future books were not to come. So what if real solicitors would not be as scatter-brained as Julia and survive or that 20th century people would hardly find the time to write all the letters her characters do, I will miss Hilary. He/she has been a good and entertaining guide to my evenings.