Sarah L. Caudwell
Personal Information
Description
Excerpts from the obituary: by Jenny Chamier Grove The Guardian, Tuesday 8 February 2000 01.09 GMT Sarah Caudwell, who has died of cancer aged 60, was a barrister who turned to crime writing when she ran out of good crime novels to read. It is no coincidence that the titles of all Sarah's books contain classical references. She was educated at Aberdeen high school for girls and the local university, where she read Latin and ancient Greek. She then read law at St Anne's College, Oxford, where she was a fast-talking undergraduate, puffing at her pipe and sometimes composing humorous verse. One such occasion began with a party in Balliol College, Oxford, where she made overtures to a don whom she considered to have "a good profile". He resisted her efforts to further the acquaintance. But the don, who lectured in English, was known for his habit of watching television and, a few days later, Sarah sent him a verse: I cast aside my modesty, I laid aside my shame/ And on my knees I offered love - or something much the same/ You brushed my powder from your sleeve, with elegant precision/ And murmured: "Conversation is killing television." Called to the Bar in 1965, she left in the mid-1970s to become deputy legal adviser to the trust division of Lloyd's Bank. But it was her life as a junior chancery barrister that formed the basis of her books, and several of her friends from those days can be discerned, thinly disguised, among her fictional characters.
Books
The Mammoth Book of Comic Crime
The Perfect Murder
In trying to unravel the truth behind the murder of his ex-wife and son, Sebastian Costas has followed a ghost of a lead all the way to Sacramento. The evidence suggests a murder-suicide, but something he heard a week before the killing won't allow him to accept that. He believes her second husband - a cop - killed them and then faked his own death. But proving it isn't easy. Then he gets a call from Jane Burke, an investigator with The Last Stand.
Malice Domestic 6
(Malice Domestic #6) by Anne Perry (Contributor), Edward Marston (Contributor) , Lindsey Davis (Contributor) , Marjorie Eccles (Contributor) , Anthea Fraser (Goodreads Author) (Contributor) , Kerry Greenwood (Contributor) , Susan Moody (Goodreads Author) (Contributor) , Betty Nathan (Contributor) , more… 3.67 · Rating details · 129 Ratings · 21 Reviews Collects seventeen traditional mysteries by such contemporary writers as Marjorie Eccles, Jan Burke, Anthea Fraser, and Edward Marston. Contents: A Dance with Life, Death... and Laughter by Anne Perry The Corbett Correspondence by Edward Marston & Peter Lovesey Like to Die by Catherine Aird Immortality [Sebastian Grady] by Jon L. Breen Ways to Kill a Cat by Simon Brett Mea Culpa by Jan Burke The Gentleman’s Gentleman by Dorothy Cannell Malice Among Friends by Sarah Caudwell True Confessions by Kate Charles Abstain from Beans by Lindsey Davis Time’s Wingèd Chariot by Marjorie Eccles Alternative Reality by Anthea Fraser Come Sable Night by Kerry Greenwood Murder Mid-Atlantic by Edward Marston City Boy by Susan Moody One in Every Family by Betty Nathan The Two Ladies of Rose Cottage by Peter Robinson Sweet Fruition by David Williams
Shortest Way to Hades (SIGNED)
From classicmysteries.net: "We are told quite often that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Certainly the intentions of the lawyers working to protect the assets of a very large (and very English) estate from taxation had the best of intentions. Without a change to the legal trust which had originally been set up, the heirs of a five million pound estate would have to pay more than three million in taxes. A little practical - and perfectly legal - editing of the trust agreement would reduce that bill very considerably. No, the intentions were certainly good. It was hardly their fault that someone decided a certain short cut along that well-paved road was going to be needed." And when that shortcut involves murdering one of the beneficiaries, Oxford legal scholar Hilary Tamar is called upon by her young friends practicing at Lincoln's Inn to unravel the mystery before the murderer eliminates another inconvenience - permanently.
The sirens sang of murder
Young barrsiter Michael Cantrip has skipped of to the Channel Islands to take on a tax-law case that's worth a fortune -- if Cantrip's tax-planning cronies can locate the missing heir. But Cantrip has waded in way over his head. Strange things are happening on these mysterious, isolated isles. Something is going bump in the night -- and bumping off members of the legal team, one by one. Soon Cantrip is telexing the gang at the home office for help. And it's up to amateur investigator Hilaray Tamar (Oxford don turned supersleuth) to get Cantrip back to safety of his chambers -- alive!From the Paperback edition.
Thus was Adonis murdered
The witty chronicles of a stable of young London barristers, narrated by their former tutor, an academic scholar of indeterminate gender. These stories are Bertie Wooster only with brains; Rumpole if he were young and good looking; Mary Poppins unencumbered with kiddies. You will laugh.
The Sibyl in her grave
Julia Larwood's Aunt Regina needs help. She and two friends pooled their modest resources and invested in equities. Now the tax man demands his due, but they've already spent the money. How can they dig themselves out of the tax hole? 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 rectory, plowing under a cherished garden, and establishing an aviary of ravens. When Isabella is found dead, all clues point to death by fiscal misadventure.So Julia calls in an old friend and Oxford fellow, Professor Hilary Tamar, to follow a money trail that connects Aunt Regina 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.From the Paperback edition.