Obituaries - Feb. 13, 2000

* Sarah Caudwell; Barrister and Mystery Writer

Sarah Caudwell, 60, a pipe-smoking British barrister who turned to writing mysteries that were well received in the United States. The author, whose full name was Sarah Cockburn Caudwell, was born in London. Her mother, the journalist and actress Jean Ross, was the model for Sally Bowles in Christopher Isherwood’s story “Goodbye to Berlin,” on which the musical “Cabaret” was based. Caudwell’s father, Claud Cockburn, also a writer, left the family when Caudwell was 6 weeks old, and she was raised by her mother, grandmother and two aunts. She did not meet her father again until she was a student at Oxford. When she arrived at the university, its prominent debating society was still closed to women. Caudwell helped lead the fight to overturn that ban and became one of the first women to speak in the debating chambers. She turned to mystery writing in the late 1970s, employing the same cast of characters in “Adonis Murdered,” “The Shortest Way to Hades” and “The Sirens Sang of Murder.” Her latest novel, “The Sybil in Her Grave,” will be released in the United States this summer. Her half brothers, Alexander, Andrew and Patrick Cockburn, are all well-known political writers. On Jan. 28 in London of cancer.