9-9-00

Less is More, Miss Pym always says. This business of having to turn out a book a year doesn't necessarily make for the best literature on the crime scene. Thus we have Sue Grafton not necessarily bringing us an M or an N every twelvemonths anymore. And other writers are finding ways to take their time to the benefit of their books.

To take my own favorite example, the total of the literary output by Josephine Tey is seven. That's right. And every one a gem.*

Of course there will always be those inventive few who not only can do a book a year, but find it necessary to write under one or more pseudonyms to cover their output. Donald Westlake comes to mind, as does Evan Hunter.

All this is in praise of the English barrister/author, Sarah Cockburn, whose mystery series featuring Hilary Tamar, Oxford Professor of medieval law as sleuth, was written under the pseudonym of Sarah Caudwell. "The Sibyl in Her Grave" (Delacorte Press; $23.95; 296 pages)has just been published in the United States. It is her fourth book, and her last. Ms. Caudwell died earlier in the year. The first book featuring Hilary (man or woman? We never do find out) and his band of five young London barristers was introduced to us back in 1981-"Thus Was Adonis Murdered". A second book appeared in 1985, and a third in 1989. If Martha Grimes is a descendent of Agatha Christie, and Elizabeth George is Dorothy L. Sayers' present incarnation, then Sarah Caudwell, for her brief stay on these shores, was most likely Josephine Tey come back for an all-too-brief visit.

· Caudwell's "The Sibyl In Her Grave" contains all the elements of a marvelous English 'cosy'; a small village which houses an eccentric, lovable vicar, a mad virgin, and a cackle of elegant ladies of a certain age… one of whom is the aunt of one of the female barristers in Professor Tamar's London chambers, and who communicates with her niece through a series of witty letters. Ms. Caudwell never talked down to her readers, who are treated here to a twisty, mordant plot that continues to surprise us until the very last page.

Now four books over a period of almost twenty years is not a maddeningly large oeuvre. In fact, it is all too few for the many Caudwell fans. Amanda Cross, another literate witty writer says on the jacket of "Sybil" "I hardly know whether to cry for joy at the return of Tamar and his sexy young lawyers or to weep for the finality of this bittersweet adventure."