Death Comes to Pemberley - Rambling Readers

No cover — P. D. James: Death Comes to Pemberley (2011, Alfred E. Knopf)

Published Jan. 1, 2011 by Alfred E. Knopf.

ISBN:: 978-1-62090-231-8

(1 review)

Death Comes to Pemberly is a murder mystery based on the characters from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The novel joins Mr and Mrs Darcy after they have been married for six year and just as they are preparing to hold their annual ball in honour of Mr Darcy’s mother.

Everything is going well, Jane and Bingley have arrived and their staff have preparations well in hand. Then the night before the ball Lydia turns up hysterical, screaming that her husband has been murdered. We find out that Lydia, with Wickham and Denny, had been on her way to Pemberley for the ball, uninvited of course, when Wickham and Denny had gone into the woods and gunshots were heard. Lydia promptly took off, headed straight for Pemberley.

24 editions

Leaf 🍂 reviewed Death comes to Pemberley by P. D. James (Windsor mysteries)

Review of 'Death comes to Pemberley' on 'Storygraph'

3 stars

This is really more a response to Pride & Prejudice than a mystery. Far more words are devoted to unravelling the characters' hidden emotional turmoil and motives in that novel than to the death or ensuing investigation at Pemberley.
Read it expecting a prose dissertation on Austen and not a typical murder mystery novel, and you'll be less likely to be disappointed by it.