January 20, 2023
Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James
P. D. James presents a mystery featuring characters from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. It's five years since the end of Pride and Prejudice, and the marriage of Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy. They are happily married with two little boys. Elizabeth's sisters Jane and Mary are also married (unexpectedly, in Mary's case), while youngest sister Kitty remains contentedly at home with their parents. Middle sister Lydia is married to Wickham, the man that she (scandalously) eloped with, and due to the scandal their elopement generated, the Darcys do not meet the couple socially, and they are not received at Pemberley, the Darcys' estate. All of that changes on the eve of the Darcys annual ball, when a carriage careens up to Pemberly and Lydia emerges, screaming that her husband has been murdered. (Lydia was not invited to the ball and was planning on gate-crashing the event.)
Meh. Basically Jane Austen fan fiction. P. D. James is a great mystery writer, and this is not her best effort. The mystery itself is pretty weak. Only for diehard JA fans. Which I'm not.
The Pemberley estate, from the film adaptation
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