The Murder of Mr Wickham - Claudia Gray

Published by Vintage Books/Penguin Random House LLC: New York, 2022.
'A Mr Darcy and Miss Tilney Mystery' Book 1. Followed by 'The Late Mrs Willoughby.'

The second book I've read in what could be a developing sub-genre: Jane Austen mysteries! Death Comes to Pemberley was the first, and although that was written using intentionally Austen-style choice of words, The Murder of Mr Wickham is far more successful in creating both the Austen feel and the proper murder-mystery vibe. It is also a little larger in scope than Pemberley was; this time, the characters in the story are not just pulled from Pride and Prejudice, but seemingly from every Austen novel! I say seemingly as I have still not read all of her works, but characters from Sense and Sensibility turn up, as do characters from Emma, and the rest seem to be referring to other literature as well. The author has even created her own 'Austen timeline' to make sense of her plot, telling us that the Darcys have been married about 20 years, whereas (spoilers for Sense and Sensibility) Colonel Brandon and Marianne have been married less than a year.

In what some Austen fans may find a bit sacrilegious, Gray has let each of her main couples come to a place of miscommunication and even mild estrangement. This is obviously an intentional choice, as this allows each character to be more a suspected murderer than they would if they were all happily married. Fortunately, Gray is still able to maintain the generally light-hearted tone of Austen's work, and also makes sure to patch up the relationship problems by the end of the work so that each couple can be restored to their 'happily ever after.' Without going into spoilers, there is a murderer that needs to be unmasked, and when that happens it does put a very heavy feeling over that patch of the plot - particularly knowing that murderers were executed for their crimes - and yet Gray manages to achieve a satisfying slight-of-hand twist that both wraps the plot up and restores the light-hearted feeling that a good Austen novel should end on.

If it sounds like I'm raving about this book, it is because I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. It manages to be exactly the type of book it is going for: Austen-styled romance, relatively decent whodunnit, and even a book with some modern sensibilities that (unlike another book I read this year) manages to acknowledge the way people of the time period would have reacted even as it argues for tolerance.

For a book that was picked up from the library on a whim, it is one of my favourite recent reads.

Completed 29 July 2023.

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