Anyone who can tell a pretty hilarious Shakespeare joke is okay in my book. And this book is full of really hilarious Shakespeare jokes. Poor Desdemona. Oh, man. L, as they say, OL. And the slapstick. Oh, the slapstick! She gets it just right in that dry, British way, where you feel like she’s describing something really elegant, but actually it’s almost grotesque. This book was wonderful. I totally love it. I would give it five stars, except my undying devotion for Gaudy Night is making it impossible for me to do that. It’s completely unfair because this book is so perfect on its own. But . . . there is still Gaudy Night, which makes me tear up from how much I love it. So, the star system is cheating Caudwell in this instance. (Edited: I had to go back and give them all five stars after finishing the last one because they are all so wonderful.)I know I’ve said it before, but I’m not, as a rule, a fan of mysteries. I don’t have a sense of suspense, so when suspense drags on for too long, I just get bored and stop caring. Mostly, though, it bothers me when I feel like you the author actually had nothing to say, but just picked out some random things, had the sleuth notice them, and then brought those things around in the end to be randomly the solution. I don’t know why I’m reading that because they could be any facts. Like, the lipstick-stained cigarette, or the broken nail, or the powder on the lapel, or what. ever. It seems like machine-generated stories, where the author really has nothing to tell me. This book is the opposite of that. In this book, when the mystery wraps up in the end, the solution is the meaning of the story. It is why to read the book. I mean, the rest of the antics are great, but the solution is the purpose. I like that.Oh, and the art law! Yay! The art law! It is just lovely. Art law is so fun. Most of art law has to do with inheritance and cultural artifacts, like it does in this book, and I think it is such an interesting topic. Don’t worry, this book is mostly about cute boys and the silly antics of crime-solving lawyers and funny Shakespeare jokes, but the art law is super interesting and absolutely correct, if you’re into that kind of thing. I read this over spring break, lying by a pool in Palm Springs, and it was just perfect. There was a cute baby there, doing cute baby things, and good friends, good food, good book. So perfect. This is a wonderful beach read. It’s put-down-able, but also pick-back-up-again-able. I wanted to know what was going to happen, but I didn’t feel like if I put it down, I would be unable to hear the words of my friends trying to talk to me. Sometimes, with a beach read, I don’t like to have something too engrossing because then if I start reading outside, I get sunburned because I forget I’m outside. Or, if I’m inside, I never see the light of day. Those books have their three-in-the-morning moments, but they are a commitment. They’re like a friend who I really need a play-break from after a little while. Too much energy. This is like a perfectly lovely, reliable friend, who I hope to be more like someday. I have passed to another friend the copy that Elizabeth passed on to me, but I’m pretty positive I will read this book again someday, if only to remember all the funny Shakespeare stuff.
4.5 stars. I was enchanted by this. It’s a comedy of manners, and also a pretty decent murder mystery. The writing is stylized to look like something you’d see in a Regency or Victorian novel, which seems a bit incongruous for a contemporary story published in 1981, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.A group of young London barristers are concerned about their friend Julia, who has gone on holiday to Venice, alone. Apparently Julia is one of those people who trips over things and loses her way and forgets to pay her income taxes, so it’s with some trepidation that the barristers congregate to read Julia’s letters home.Julia writes unabashedly about her carnal goal for the holiday, and almost immediately spots a potential romantic partner in her tour group: young man with an admirable profile. She’s somewhat hindered, however, by a friend’s advice:"It is your view, as I understand it, that when dealing with young men one should make no admission, in the early stages, of the true nature of one's objectives but should instead profess a deep admiration for their fine souls and splendid intellects. One is not to be discouraged, if I have understood you correctly, by the fact that they have neither."The barristers find Julia’s letters vastly entertaining until they receive a news bulletin that she’s been accused of murdering someone. They find the very notion incredible, and set about trying to prove her innocence."It appears," said Ragwort, "to have been, as murders go, a perfectly tidy, competent murder.""Oh, in that case, certainly, Julia can’t have done it."The epistolary format works wonderfully well. I loved the commentary as Julia’s letters are read aloud, and the suspense is maintained because the news of the murder arrives before the letters have caught up to current events.The book is hilarious, and I enjoyed the mystery - especially the parts about the stolen painting. I thought the resolution was a bit weak, but otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and I’m glad there are three more in the series.
Do You like book Thus Was Adonis Murdered (1994)?
Julia's intrepid friends--consisting of her colleagues in chambers as well as Oxford don and sometime sleuth Hilary Tamar are the recipients of Julia's letters from abroad and soon learn that she is suspect number one in the murder of the beautiful Ned Watson. They determine to track down clues and haunt the fellow Art Lovers until proof can be found to persuade the Italian authorities of Julia's innocence. Somehow just the fact that the murder was too tidy for Julia to be responsible is just not as convincing to the Italian police.Thus Was Adonis Murdered reads like a cross between Jane Austen, British drawing room comedy, and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest written as a murder mystery. There are so many scenes that make up this upper-crust-sounding, yet slightly slap-dash amateur investigation so much fun to read. From the letters written by Julia that give us a firm idea of her intellectually sound but common sense starved self as well as the background for the murder to the barristers' shameless pumping of art aficionado Benjamin Dobble to Cantrip's interview with Major Linnaker, a shady art and antiques dealer, there are delights all along the way.I really must share this tidbit from Cantrip (about the interview):Was it really only two hours? It seemed much longer than that. Much longer. Much, much longer. The Major's known a lot of women. English women. Italian women. Arab women. Serbo-Croatian women. The right sort of women, the wrong sort of women. Women who would, women who wouldn't, women who might have. He told me about them all. Are you sure it was only two hours?The light touch and light banter between the barristers make for a quick and entertaining read. I thoroughly enjoyed the dry British wit and sarcastic humor. There are also several very apt descriptions of the academic life and mind. Very appealing, fun, and interesting.Back in 2011 when I read The Shortest Way to Hades, I made mention of the fact that nowhere in the story do we learn whether Hilary Tamar be male or female (and that I didn't really notice this until John at Pretty Sinister Books pointed it out). I had assumed that Hilary was a woman because Hilary is generally a feminine name in the US. And certain ways in which the other characters addressed our law-type scholar made me think s/he was female as well. This particular reading makes me think that Hilary is a man. There's something about the way s/he addresses fellow characters. Darn it. Caudwell is pretty good at this keeping a secret and mystifying the reader business. Now I'm curious to see which way I lean in book number three.I love the Edward Gorey covers on these....one of the main reasons I first grabbed them up. I'm so glad that the stories live up to the covers.First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.
—Bev
This was my first mystery/thriller book based on 501 Must Read Books listing. I did not like it. I think the reason is that the convoluted plot is too confusing to be entertaining. Also, the Scottish style of writing and terms are too foreign for me to appreciate. I just did not find the humor funny and the book especially in the middle was just too dragging and boring. I had to encourage myself by thinking that I might get some surprise in the end part when the killer is revealed. In a way, it
—K.D. Absolutely
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 thingone 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
—tom
