The Sirens Sang of Murder by
Sarah Caudwell
pbk out August 02
(Robinson)
at £6.99
The set of the late Sarah Caudwell's four detective novels is completed by the
appearance of a reprint of 'The Sirens Sang of Murder', which first came out in 1989,
and its long-awaited successor, 'The Sibyl in her Grave'. Caudwell was hardly a fast
worker and it is a tragedy that she did not live to see the publication of her final work,
which oddly was not taken up by her former publishers. She would surely have been
happy with the attractive design of the collection that Constable Robinson has so
enterprisingly produced. The narrator is Professor Hilary Tamar (gender undisclosed),
tutor in legal history at an Oxford college, and the main characters are a group of
young barristers whose chambers are at 62 New Square. Tamar's mannered literary
style is perhaps an acquired taste, but once acquired, it is a taste to savour. 'The
Sirens' concerns, as Tamar says, 'a deplorably old-fashioned murder' with, sure
enough, 'a deplorably old-fashioned clue' to its solution. The new story is enjoyably
up to standard, again making use of letters to convey plot information and offering wit
and entertainment aplenty. Caudwell was, as Tamar might say, sui generisi, one of a
kind. The crime fiction world is the poorer for her passing.
(
Martin Edwards
- author of the highly acclaimed Harry Devlin Mysteries)
