So very adorably British!

Thus Was Adonis Murdered

Sometimes authors of detective fiction will attempt to enhance their mystery by pretending that they are as ignorant of the outcome as the readers are. Not so for Professor Hilary Tamar--she modestly admits on page one
that,

If the events in which Julia Larwood became involved last September had not been subject to the penetrating scrutiny of the trained scholar--that is to say, my own--well, I do not say it is certain that Julia would even now be languishing in a Venetian prison.

(But she would)

Fans of P.G. Wodehouse and Dorothy Sayers should give this a try--Ms. Caldwell has somehow managed to capture the wry wit of the British in a tangled weave of mystery, motive, and murder. But in true detective form, the mystery is unraveled through pure attention to fact--not psychological mumbo-jumbo, motive analysis, or from the killer making a second attempt when the detective gets too close to the truth. I really hate the latter--you know those books where the "detective" stumbles around blindly until he happens to trip over the murderer's big feet and gets shot at? This is NOT one of those. There are no fortuitous confessions, either. Pure logic, observation and deduction rule the day.

I even suspect that if I'd been a more careful reader and not got distracted with the comedy, I'd have figured out the clues myself. But I was in too much of a hurry to get to the next funny part--and it was indeed very funny. And distressingly erudite.

Let me just mention that a few readers were put-off by the writing style--they complained about things like "big words" and "run-on sentences". Silly! That's the whole point! If you can't make yourself slow down and enjoy the language, you should get the audiobook.