Do You like book The Sirens Sang Of Murder (1990)?
Nothing is certain except death and taxes, and this book has them both. The junior barristers of Lincoln’s Inn become involved with a group of tax planners who are trying to locate the heirs to a trust fund. There’s a complicated scheme concerned with tax avoidance, and much of the action takes place in the famous tax havens of the Channel Islands, the Cayman Islands and Monaco.This was an amusing read, but I think it’s the weakest of the three books so far. The plot involves numerous coincidences, and I never did quite understand the intricacies of the trust arrangement.As usual, Julia’s character is the most fun. It begins with her indignant reaction to the judge who disapproved of her client, who as “an innocent property developer, had entered into a perfectly straightforward transaction which happened to involve a bank in Amsterdam and one or two companies in the Netherlands Antilles and which therefore happened to result in his having no tax to pay.” The judge, on the other hand, seemed to consider it “the duty of every citizen to arrange his affairs in such a way as to maximise his liabilities to the Inland Revenue, and of his professional advisors to assist him in achieving that result.”Like the first two books this one is partially epistolary, with letters arriving from Cantrip via the office’s brand new Telex machine, a device which is providing Cantrip a great deal of amusement.
—Jamie
“Yes,” said Julia. “So the impasse—which I take to be the correct expression for a situation in which no one makes a pass at anyone—continued throughout my stay . . . except that on the way back to our hotel I tripped over something, and Patrick took my arm to prevent me falling over. This had a very peculiar effect on me, even worse than the breathlessness and indigestion which I have previously mentioned—I felt as if suppose an ice cream might feel when hot chocolate sauce is poured over it.” p. 68The trouble with real life is that you don’t know whether you’re the hero or just some nice chap who gets bumped off in chapter five to show what a rotter the villain is without anyone minding too much. p. 171Unfortunately, Good Reads doesn't have Cauldwell's fourth book, The Sybil in Her Grave, so I'll have to state with sob-laden gasps that this is the last book Cauldwell wrote and the erudite, ironic, and oh-so-full-of-him/herself Hilary will solve no more murders.
—Beth
The detailed discussions of British tax law make this installment of the series a bit more heavy going than previous novels, but I thought it was well worth it. Cantrip is a great source of misquotings and malapropisms, and the snippets of the romance he and Julia are working on are great send-ups of both female-oriented romance and male romances such as the Bond books (and, naturally, there is a side trip to Monte Carlo).probably not the best of the series with which to begin, but still delightful for the dedicated fan who doesn't mind using her brain a bit.
—Kestrell
