Book Review: This time it's the energetic if callow Cantrip sending missives back to 63 New Square in this third installment of Sarah Caudwell's Professor Hilary Tamar series, The Sirens Sang of Murder. Here we have Jersey, Guernsey (of Potato Peel Society fame), and Sark, tax-law, missing heirs, London, the new-fangled telex, Monte Carlo, locked wine cellars, helicopters, and, of course, murder. Each book in the Professor Tamar series seems just a wee bit better than one before, and the only true tragedy is that there is only one more book (The Sibyl in Her Grave) left in the series. Actually, one is not required to read the books of the Hilary Tamar series in order, each stands alone, but I've found it more enjoyable to do so, as I think Caudwell, of course, expected. And let me save everyone some time: it's inconceivable that anyone who enjoyed one of the books would find any of the others anything less than equally entertaining. All, including The Sirens Sang of Murder, are of equally high quality. All are very English, full of lawyers, full of humor (more dry than wet), arch, wry, consistently clever, with a dash of sex. And all are "cozy" mysteries, or at least a humorous take on the cozy mystery. We learn to know and love Sarah Caudwell's cast: the curvy and amorous Julia, the perfectly professional Selena, Ragwort of the chiseled profile, the youthfully enthusiastic Cantrip, and of course the immaculate and always indeterminate Professor Hilary Tamar, who solves crimes due to her scholarly qualities. If you like your mystery leavened with a little (or a lot of) dry humor, you may well enjoy the books, Thus Was Adonis Murdered, The Shortest Way to Hades, and now The Sirens Sang of Murder, as much as I do. [4.5 Stars]
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