Book 2

The Shortest Way To Hades

by Sarah Caudwell

Published 29 October 1984
It seemed the perfect way to avoid three million in taxes on a five-million-pound estate: change the trust arrangement. Everyone in the family agreed to support the heiress, ravishing raven-haired Camilla Galloway, in her court petition -- except dreary Cousin Deirdre, who suddenly demanded a small fortune for her signature. Then Deirdre had a terrible accident. That was when the young London barristers handling the trust -- Cantrip, Selena, Timothy, Ragwort, and Julia -- summoned their Oxford friend Professor Hilary Tamar to Lincoln's Inn. Julia thinks it's murder. Hilary demurs. Why didn't the heiress die? But when the accidents escalate and they learn of the naked lunch at Uncle Rupert's, Hilary the Scholar embarks on the most perilous quest of all: the truth....

Whilst on a trip to the sunny Channel Islands to find the heir to a lucrative tax law case, young barrister Michael Cantrip finds himself in over his head. Peculiar things begin to occur on the mysterious and isolated islands with something - or somebody -- bumping off members of his legal team.

With the help of his mentor, amateur investigator Hilary Tamar, Cantrip, must find a safe passage back to the Lincoln's Inn Chambers.


Thus Was Adonis Murdered

by Sarah Caudwell

Published 19 March 1981
His was a body to die for...Reduced to near penury by the iniquitous demands of the Inland Revenue, young barrister Julia Larwood spends the last of her savings on an Art Lovers holiday to Venice. But poor, romantic Julia - how could she possibly have guessed that the ravishing fellow Art Lover for whom she conceived a fatal passion was himself an employee of the Inland Revenue? Or that her hard-won night of passion with him would end in murder- with her inscribed copy of the current Finance Act subsequently discovered just a few feet away from the corpse...