Book review: Death Comes to Pemberley

Apparently loads of people have written sequels to Pride and Prejudice over the years. Can't say I've ever wanted to read any of them myself but I thought I'd give P.D. James' effort, Death Comes to Pemberley, a go. This being P.D. James she's changed the genre from Jane Austen's original romantic comedy to a murder mystery - a few years after the end of Pride and Prejudice we rejoin Elizabeth and Mr Darcy at Pemberley, preparing to host a ball when the Wickhams arrive suddenly, announcing that Mr Wickham's best (/only) friend Captain Denny has been murdered in the woods. Soon Wickham is arrested for it, but continues to protest his innocence throughout the trial, and despite the bad things he does know him capable of, Darcy believes him.

This is a really disappointing, irritating book. The actual murder mystery itself is fairly dull and predictable - the middle section of the book is a pretty straightforward courtroom procedural, with occasional reminders of an unrelated subplot about the servants that is blatantly there to provide a last-minute solution to the mystery. And as an Austen sequel it doesn't even try to be witty or have any interesting exchanges between Elizabeth and Darcy - in the few scenes they actually have together they mainly discuss household matters. Gripping!

But surely the most annoying thing must be James' recaps of P&P - not sure how necessary the lengthy recap that opens the novel is at all, I guess a few murder mystery fans who haven't read Austen might need it, but I would have thought the majority of the audience for this would be people who were fans of the book or had at least seen one of the many adaptations. Even if it was needed, there's no excuse for how heavy-handed it is: People have been spotting Austen's subtext easily enough for centuries, they probably don't need P.D. James to laboriously spell out that Elizabeth only fell for Darcy when she figured out quite how nice his house was. And at the end of the book we get even more of this, as, for reasons that don't particularly matter too much to the mystery we've just had solved, the exact circumstances of Wickham and Lydia's hasty marriage are dredged over in great detail. Death Comes to Pemberley uses the characters from Pride and Prejudice but doesn't really have anywhere near enough connection to the original's atmosphere to be called a proper sequel.