Post-Pride and Prejudice

British novelist P.D. James has penned her 21st novel at age 91.

Death Comes to Pemberley--Darcy's abode in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice--draws the characters from Austen's classic and involves them in a tale of murder and emotional mayhem.

The story is set in 1803, six years after Pride and Prejudice was finished (though it wasn’t published until 1813) and presumably when the marriage of Elizabeth and Darcy took place. They have two young sons now, and the arrival of a third child is shortly to be announced. But their tranquillity is interrupted one wet and windy evening when an unexpected carriage comes rocketing up the drive.

The style of Death Comes to Pemberley is a loose approximation of 19th-century prose, a sort of modern equivalent, rather than a painstaking imitation. But it’s more than convincing and every now and then, as a kind of homage or reminder, hits the precise, epigrammatic Austen note.

Courtesy The NY Times