2015 Book Review #36: Death Comes to Pemberly

[jethrien]

Title: Death Comes to Pemberly
Author: P.D. James
Genre: Historical mystery
Thingummies: 1.5

Synopsis: Renowned British mystery writer takes on Pride and Prejudice. Much ambition, not much payout.

Thoughts: There have been a number of modern riffs on Elizabeth and Darcy. Some of them have been fun, others less impressive. I happen to love P.D. James' mysteries, so I figured if anyone could competently handle the pastiche, she could.

Unfortunately, it doesn't really work that way.

One of the big problems with cozy mysteries is explaining why normal people would chose to play detective. That goes double for borrowed characters--one must explain why characters who have never shown a particular inclination to solve mysteries will suddenly start investigating. James neatly solves this dilemma...by having no one investigate. A guy gets murdered. People are angsty. Then after the trial is resolved by a deus ex machina, a series of denouements occur in which several people spill their secrets to Darcy, pretty much unprompted.

Just Darcy, though. Elizabeth is appropriately ladylike and thus basically doesn't appear in this book.

So...no one actually takes any actions. Stuff just kind of happens. Everyone behaves relatively in-character, but there's a reason Jane Austen didn't write a mystery--because these are not the right characters to be in a mystery in the first place.

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

So I watched the miniseries they did based on this story, and it straight awful. They explain the investigation stuff better than it sounds like they did in the book, but the reading on Darcy and Elizabeth is dreadful. Darcy is kind of rude to everyone and Elizabeth is in A State over whether or not Darcy regrets marrying her because her brother-in-law might have killed someone. (After what Wickham did prior to Darcy marrying Elizabeth that didn't stop him from proposing--twice--I hardly think him murdering anyone would matter.) It was just unfortunate wastage of awesome British Actor Day Players all around, really.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

...they did a miniseries of this crap?

Still, it sounds like Elizabeth got to do more in the miniseries than she did in the book.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

She really didn't. She basically got to be "I'm so sorry I make this miserable for you all the time" and castigate Darcy for wanting Col. Fitzwilliam to marry his sister instead of some rando. (Ugh, add to the list of character assassinations: Col. Fitzwilliam.)