Thrift Store Book Bag: The Sibyl in Her Grave by Sarah Caudwell

One of the reasons I have not been posting more then 2 or 3 times a week is because when the weather gets cold I like to snuggle up with a good book. I know some of you like to snuggle up with your computers but I am old fashioned.

I used to spend about 3 or 4 days at the library but I am no longer allowed in there… actually I am allowed in, but I can’t check anything out. That’s because people in my immediate family who will remain nameless ran up their library cards with a lot of overdue books and then couldn’t pay their fines. Then they borrowed my library card and they ran up fees on it. I paid it off to the tune of fifty bucks to get back MY privileges. Once my card was free again and MY borrowing privileges returned – these persons took my card and ran it up again. Regardless of my library woes- I now buy my books for a quarter or fifty cents at a time from the thrift store. That way I can keep them as long as I want and the library police won’t come after me!

The book I am currently reading is The Sibyl in Her Grave by Sarah Caudwell. One of the reasons I picked this up off the shelf was because of the lovely illustration on the front dust jacket. I immediately recognized it as an Edward Gorey illustration. Mr. Gorey you might recognize as the artist behind the wonderful cartoon work in the beginning of the Mystery! television program on PBS. Oddly enough when I checked the book to see if it was the case, the illustrator was in fact a woman named Virginia Norey… which I believe to be a pseudonym for Edward Gorey.

The predominant reason I bought the book however, is because I love reading cozy mysteries. I like a good mystery but I don’t like gratuitous gore and cursing. Cozy mysteries in a nutshell are mysteries that involve an educated female detective, very little violence, very little sex, and a lot a mystery by the way of plot twists. I was hoping that this book- would fit the bill.

I have to say I was well rewarded- The Sibyl in Her Grave is a clever mystery involving the death of a difficult, unlikable seer who owns a murder of ravens as pets. Not only does she keep ravens- she has a singularly horrible pet vulture as well named Roderigo! As you can imagine when this lovely seer moved into a local village with her “pet” birds she was not a favorite neighbor, because of the birds and other quirks, the despicable psychic is not well received. The only person who seems to like this psychic is her live in niece whom she treats as a slave.

However, it is not her uncouth manner, or her dirty birds which cause the death of the sibyl. Her death is in fact- tied to insider trading at a London bank. A group of young London lawyers are entangled in this mystery – one of whom is advising the bank President regarding his successor. The bank President has only become recently aware of the insider trading at his bank and does not wish to leave the bank to the guilty party. Another lawyer, Julia Larwood is even closer to the mystery as her Aunt Regina is a neighbor of the now dead sybil. Not only a neighbor to the departed- but “Aunt Reg” appears to have benefited from the insider trading as well!

There’s another side mystery to this slim book as well. The narrator – one Professor Hilary Tamar, friend and confidante of the band of lawyers, remains faceless and sexless as well. It’s a very intriguing side twist that the narrator is so shrouded in mystery. Even at the end of the book the finer details of Hilary’s character are not disclosed.

The Sibyl in Her Grave is Sarah Caudwell’s 4th book in this series and unfortunately her last. I was very heartbroken to read that she passed away in 2000 the same year the book was published. Fortunately for myself I have not read her other three books and look forward to doing so.

Sarah Caudwell’s books in the Hilary Tamar series are

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