Thus Was Adonis Murdered, by Sarah Caudwell (1981)

Sarah Caudwell (1939 – 2000) was a British barrister and writer of detective stories.

"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."

For American readers, Sarah Caudwell may be an aquired taste. As her Wikipedia entry states, "The books have a self-consciously literary style, including many references to the classics and other subjects of higher learning."...and "Professor Tamar is frequently physically removed from the action and is kept informed by a series of improbably long letters and telexes."

I don't know if I'd call them "improbably" long...her characters are British, after all, but today's modern readers, who communicate via internet and who on many occasions have said proudly that they can't read more than a paragraph of an email or message board message without becoming bored, may find the style unreadable.

I love it. That is Sarah Caudwell's schtick, that the action takes place via letters, which Hilary (and the other characters not involved in the action) read, and react to.

Of all her books, Thus Was Adonis Murdered is my favorite, The Sybil in her Grave my least favorite, because of the nature of the book, but I'll get to that when I present it here.

Backmatter:
For young barrister Julia Larwood, it was to be a vacation in search of eros, in flight from the tax man... An Art Lover's Holiday to Italy. Reduced to near penury by the Inland Revenue, Julia could hardly afford such a luxury, but she'd be in hock to the Revenue either way, so why not? Poor, hapless, incurably sentimental Julia. How could she know that the ravishing young ARt Lover for whom she conceived a fatal passion was himself an employee of Inland Revenue? Or that her hard-won night of passion would end in murder - with her inscribed copy of this year's Finance Act lying a few feet from the corpse...

Opening paragraphs
Scholarship asks, thank God, no recompense but Truth. It is not for the sake of material reward that she (Scolarship) pursues her (Truth) through the undergrowth of Ignorance, shining on Obscurity the bright torch of Reason and clearing aside the tangled thorns of Error with the keen secaturs of Intellect. Nor is it for the sake of public glory and the applause of the multitude: the scholar is indifferent to vulgar acclain. Nor is it even in the hope that those few intimate friends who have observed art first hand the labor of the chase will mark with a word or two of discerninbg congratulation its eventual achievement. Which is very fortunate, because they don't.

Hilary Tamar Books
Thus Was Adonis Murdered (1981)
The Shortest Way to Hades (1985)
The Sirens Sang of Murder (1989)
The Sibyl in Her Grave (2000)