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. The result is quite neatly summed up in the title of Sarah Caudwell's wickedly funny mystery called The Shortest Way to Hades, first published in 1985. The book is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the complete review by clicking here.
Later this Spring, at the beginning of May, Sarah Caudwell will be honored at the annual gathering of traditional mystery fans at Malice Domestic, where her name will be honored as this year's "Malice Remembers" honoree. She wrote just four mysteries, all set within the arcane (to those of us not-British) world of the British legal system. But her books are so well written, with pointed satire of the law in general and lawyers in particular, that those books have become classics in the tradition of legal mysteries. The author herself was a lawyer, specializing in international tax planning (according to her obituary in the New York Times). So it is not surprising to find that the central characters in her books are members of a firm of barristers, practicing in Lincoln’s Inn in London. There is another regular character, the narrator, Professor Hilary Tamar – and, over the course of four novels, Caudwell never reveals whether "Hilary" is a man or a woman.
The mystery began with one of those fine points of English law concerning a rather complicated will. The estate – as I said, worth about five million pounds – could have wound up owing a tax bill of three million pounds or so, unless it could be avoided. It’s the sort of thing, apparently, that British barristers handle every day. In this case, all that would be required to change the trust arrangements is the consent of various provisional beneficiaries. The primary heiress herself was fine with the change. Only one cousin was not. And that cousin suddenly had a terrible…well, let’s call it an accident. At any event, that’s why Professor Tamar received the following message:
Professor Tamar – Mr. Shepherd rang and said please come to London as soon as possible. You can stay at his flat and he will give you dinner. He says it has something to do with a murder.
The Shortest Way to Hades is written with tongue planted firmly in cheek, with some marvelously funny satire. There's a classic Golden Age feel about her novels, and she does provide clues for the careful reader to discover. For more background information about Sarah Caudwell and her novels, please be sure to read an article by mystery author and scholar Martin Edwards. He describes Caudwell and her books this way:
"Sarah Caudwell’s books are admittedly an acquired taste. Subtle, complicated and witty, they appeal most to readers who hanker after the Golden Age of crime writing...and to those whose sense of humour demands something more elitist than the belly laugh."
I think I've acquired that taste. Martin Edwards will be at Malice Domestic in May to talk about Sarah Caudwell. It's another excellent reason to be there!
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