Sirens Sang of Murder -- Sarah Caudwell

For those of us that have run out of Dorothy Sayers books to read.

Not that Sarah Caudwell's books are all that like Dorothy Sayers, but I think that the same people would like them. They're smart, funny, and very, very British. She only wrote four books before she died in 2000—I've read three of them, and now I don't know if I should read the fourth. If I do, I won't have any left to read. (This goes along with my Lord Peter problem—I've read all of the novels, but I don't want to read the short stories, because then I won't have anything left. I'm going to be really mad if I die unexpectedly).

Although Prof. Hilary Tamar (Man? Woman? Who knows? Only Sarah Caudwell, and unfortunately, she's not going to enlighten anyone) is the character that ultimately solves the mysteries, the reader gets a lot of information from the Professor's friends--a group of young lawyers. Here's an excerpt from a fax that Cantrip sends to the crew back in London (this is from The Sirens Sang of Murder):

If you're an ace investigator hot on the trail of a villinous high court judge it's a good thing to know what town you're in, so I nipped off the boat as fast as I could to find out where we were. The first thing I spotted was that everyone was talking Frogspeak, so putting two and two together I deduced we were probably in France.

I felt a bit miffed at first. I've nothing against France, except for it being full of foreigners, but it wasn't where I'd have expected old Wellieboots to go if he wanted to get the goods on my clients. I started thinking poor old Catseyes Cantrip might be on a wild-goose chase. Still having got this far I was blowed if I was giving up right away, so when he got ashore I started tailing him again.

If you're still not sure about reading them, Edward Gorey did the cover art. So there.