This is the first of Sarah Caudwell's series of legal whodunnits narrated by Hilary Temple, professor of Legal History at Oxford. Hilary's friends are a group of young barristers in Chancery Lane, Timothy, her former pupil, the austere and elegant Ragwort, impulsive, imaginative Cantrip, Selena, who is like 'a Persian cat which has just completed a succesful cross-examination' and passionate, susceptible, accident-prone Julia. Julia, who is having a disagreement with the tax man, decides to get away from it all by going on an Art Lovers tour of Italy, where she meets a beautiful young man called Ned and succumbs to his charms. Then one afternoon, after having enjoyed a passionate interlude with Ned, Julia finds him dead in bed. It turns out that Ned was an employee of the Inland Revenue, which means, as Ragwort reasonably points out, that anyone might have murdered him. However, Julia is chief suspect, and her colleagues set out to try and prove her innocence. They track down the other membersof the Art Lovers tour to try and find out the truth. Cantrip finds himself inteviewing a dodgy art dealer, the Major, who spends their time together telling Cantrip about all the women in his life. "The Major's known a lot of women. The right sort of women. The wrong sort of women. Women who would, women who wouldn't, women who might have. He told me about them all." This is a blissfully funny book. All the characters are hilarious, the book has a complex and ingeneous plot, witty dialogue, and a laugh in nearly every sentence.