buena nada fuera de lo común. una profesora de historia del derecho, es la "madrina" de un grupo de abogados, uno de ellos Julia es acusada de un homicidio en venecia. Desde la distante Londres trata de resolver el caso, La trama avanza con cartas y llamadas. Lo mejor las ironias y las charlas de los abogados entre ellos, muy british ( )

This book is essentially the platonic ideal of what I wish murder mysteries to be; in this I am continually disappointed.

Julia Larwood, accidental murder suspect, learned space case, over-educated hot mess express, is such a treasure; though I am not a hypersexual lady barrister, rarely have I felt as validated by a female character. I, too, am worried for Desdemona. ( )

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 thing

one 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 ( )

Great entertainment! ( )

My librarian friend suggested this one to me - loaned me his personal copy. He said, smiling: "It's very VEDDY British!" And he was definitely not wrong. Set in a law practice with a cast of young barristers, narrated by their mentor, a law professor, it crackles with a certain brittle, arch, snappish dialog like something out of Wodehouse or Coward, couched in verbiage that truly deserves the epithet "sesquipedalian." Now, I wallow in 19th century literature and am not afraid of polysyllables, but this took even me some work to get used to. The characters are "bright young things," and don't seem especially likable, but after a while, you start to enjoy them - they are smart, loyal, funny, and brave. The plot involves one of their number (and she IS really annoying!) on an art tour in Venice, pursuing an impossibly "enchanting" young man, but ends up accused of his murder. It is convoluted, and unfortunately much of the story is told in the form of letters our art tourist writes to her colleagues back home, who provide some relief in their eye-rolling, snarky commentary on her letters and behavior. Once you settle into the idea that the entire style and tone of this book is a send-up of "Golden Age" 1930's sorts of mystery stories, it can be rather fun. And having been published in the 1980's, Caudwell has fun with smart, competent women (one in the eye for that old fart Rumpole); one or two quite charming men (and some damaged galoots), the slimier side of the art market, and picking apart some sexist tropes from the genre she is playing with.

As it happens, I had just been perusing Martin Edwards's massive The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators compendium. One footnote mentioned Christopher Isherwood, who based his character Sally Bowles (most famously played in Cabaret by Liza Minelli) on a woman he knew called Jean Ross. Ross went on to raise a daughter, a brilliant legal scholar and barrister, named Sarah. She wrote detective novels under the name Sarah Caudwell. They may be an acquired taste, with a very definite style, but worth a shot if you think you might like that kind of thing. ( )