The Sibyl in Her Grave - (Hilary Tamar) by Sarah Caudwell (Paperback)

About the Book

Julia Larwood's Aunt Regina needs help when she and two friends owe taxes on their equity investments--after having spent all their money. Then someone connected with Regina's investments ends up dead, and things look even more dire. Julia calls in an old friend and Oxford fellow, Professor Hilary Tamar, to follow the money trail.

Book Synopsis

Follow the money in this gripping literary puzzle--the fourth and final installment of Sarah Caudwell's brilliant Hilary Tamar mystery series.

"Sarah Caudwell is one of my very favorite mystery writers."--A. J. Finn, New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window

Julia Larwood's Aunt Regina needs help. She and two friends pooled their modest resources and invested in equities. Now the tax man demands his due, but they've already spent the money. How can they dig themselves out of the tax hole? Even more to the point: Can the sin of capital gains trigger corporeal loss?

That's a question for the sibyl, psychic counselor Isabella del Comino, who has offended Aunt Regina and her friends by moving into the rectory, plowing under a cherished garden, and establishing an aviary of ravens. When Isabella is found dead, all clues point to death by fiscal misadventure.

So Julia calls in an old friend and Oxford fellow, Professor Hilary Tamar, to follow a money trail that connects Aunt Regina to what appears to be capital fraud--and capital crime. The two women couldn't have a better champion than the erudite Hilary. Once again Sarah Caudwell sweeps us into the scene of the crime, leaving us to ponder the greatest mystery of all: Hilary themself.

Don't miss any of Sarah Caudwell's riveting Hilary Tamar mysteries:
THUS WAS ADONIS MURDERED - THE SHORTEST WAY TO HADES - THE SIRENS SANG OF MURDER - THE SIBYL IN HER GRAVE

Review Quotes

"Anyone who enjoys an ingenious mystery plot will enjoy Caudwell's."
-- Newsday

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

"Marvelous ... Combines wit and forbearance, intellect and passion, above all, humor and perfection of language. Sarah set out to write a classic English village crime story, complete with vicar and mad virgin, and here it is, together with Hilary Tamar and the brilliant, sexy, young lawyers at the Chancery Bar."
-- Amanda Cross

"Brilliant."
-- Chicago Sun-Times

"The humor is wicked, but the intelligence behind it is smart and sweet."
-- The New York Times Book Review

"Clean, elegant, observant and witty."
-- The Washington Post

Also by Sarah Caudwell:

The Sirens Sang of Murder
"An absolute joy."
-- Elizabeth Peters

The Shortest Way to Hades
"An utterly delightful book ... it will be irresistible to all who enjoy polished, civilized prose."
-- The New York Times Book Review

Thus Was Adonis Murdered
"A tour de force ... a hilarious comedy of manners."
-- St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Available from Dell

About the Author

Sarah Caudwell, the pipe-smoking author of Thus Was Adonis Murdered and three other novels featuring Oxford Don Hilary Tamar, died in 2000. "Hilary's voice was in my head before any of the plots," Caudwell told writer Martin Edwards in an interview for Mystery Scene. "I knew from the outset Hilary must be an Oxford don--but of equivocal sex and even equivocal age, resembling that precise, donnish kind of individual who starts being elderly at the age of twenty-two."