Sarah Caudwell
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Sarah Caudwell (1939-2000) was a barrister and writer of detective stories, born Sarah Cockburn in Cheltenham, UK.
She is best known for a series of four murder stories written between 1980 and 1999, centred around the lives of a group of young barristers practicing in Lincoln’s Inn and narrated by a Hilary Tamar, a Professor of Medieval Law (gender unknown), who also acts as detective.
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[edit] Life
Sarah Cockburn was the daughter of Claud Cockburn, left wing journalist, and second wife Jean Ross, who was part model for Christopher Isherwood's Sally Bowles of Cabaret fame. She graduated in Classics from Aberdeen University and went on to read law at St. Anne's College, Oxford. On leaving Oxford she lectured in Law at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. Having been called to the Bar, she practiced as a barrister for several year’s in Lincoln’s Inn and later specialised in international tax planning at Lloyds Bank. It was at this time that she started to write. Caudwell has three half-brothers, Alexander Cockburn, Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, who are also journalists, is the half-sister in law of Leslie Cockburn and was the half-sister in law of Michael Flanders. Journalists Laura Flanders and Stephanie Flanders, and actress Olivia Wilde, are her half-nieces.
She was one of the first two female students to join the Oxford Union, having, legend has it, dressed up in men's clothes as a protest as its male-only membership policy. She was thus one of the first female students to speak in the Oxford Union's Debating Chamber.
She was a lifelong pipe-smoker, and for many years lived in Barnes, London with her mother and aunt.
She died of cancer in January 2000.
[edit] The Hilary Tamar Series
This series of four books, described as "legal whodunits", were written over a period of twenty years. Their primary setting is the top floor of 62 New Square at Lincoln's Inn, where four young barristers have their chambers: Michael Cantrip, Desmond Ragwort, Selena Jardine and Timothy Shepherd. While the last named only appears sporadically, taxes barrister Julia Larwood, who works in the adjacent premises, is a regular visitor and is in effect the fourth member of the group. These characters are in some ways thinly drawn, never communicating in anything other than in an ironic tone, so that even when they are involved in deadly activities, the atmosphere remains uniformly light-hearted. Even though the characters are sexually active, their cheerful friendship is sometimes reminiscent of gangs encountered in juvenile fiction.
Acting as a kind of parent to the group is the first-person narrator, Professor Hilary Tamar. This character, a former tutor to the barristers, also acts as the main detective, although other characters do make contributions to the eventual solutions. Professor Tamar is frequently physically removed from the action and is mainly kept informed by a series of improbably long letters and telexes. This distancing is amplified by Caudwell’s strategy of not specifying Tamar's sex and never quite specifying the reason for the strong bond which the character enjoys with the young advocates, notwithstanding the lack of any point of contact in terms of age, temperament, occupation or enthusiasms.
The books have a self-consciously literary style, and include many references to the classics and other subjects of higher learning. A running joke is the narrator's absurd elitism, with lower orders such as Solicitors, Accountants, Tax Inspectors and Cambridge graduates frequently being the target of barbed comments; one character is disparaged as it is suspected he had to work in order to earn a first-class degree.
The plots are intricate, carefully realised, and strongly allied to the locations chosen, these being Venice, Corfu, Sark and an English village. The author’s expertise in tax law is frequently brought into play, the centrality of this subject to inheritance being a feasible background to a financially based murder motive.
[edit] Other writing
Caudwell collaborated on crime short stories with Michael Z. Lewin and with Lawrence Block (and others) for The Perfect Murder.
She also authored a play, The Madman’s Advocate, a study of the attempted assassination in 1843 of Sir Robert Peel, which was given a rehearsed reading in Nottingham in 1995.
[edit] Bibliography
Hilary Tamar Stories
- Thus Was Adonis Murdered (1981)
- The Shortest Way to Hades (1985)
- The Sirens Sang of Murder (1989)
- The Sibyl in Her Grave (2000)
Other Novel
- The Perfect Murder: Five Great Mystery Writers Create the Perfect Crime (1991) (with Lawrence Block, Tony Hillerman and Jack Hitt)
Contributions to anthologies
- 2nd Culprit: An Annual of Crime Stories (1994)
- 3rd Culprit (1994)
- Malice Domestic 6 (1997)
- Oxford Book of Detective Stories, the (2000)
- Women Before the Bench (2001)
- Mammoth Book of Comic Crime, the (2002)
