Death Comes To Pemberley & A Severed Wasp

 Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James

From what I've read, I understand this to be P.D. James' tribute to her favourite author, Jane Austen. It's a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, similar in style and language and using the same characters. 

At first I was happy to be back at Pemberley and among old friends, but then I began to notice that my friends were changed. They were saying things that didn't seem to suit the personalities I remembered, and the whole tone of the book was different. Austen wrote a book light in tone with a little bite in its good-natured scarcasm. In James' book the tone is more melancholy and there is little of the witty banter between the characters that made Pride and Prejudice sparkle. That one was called a "comedy of manners"; this one is a tradegy about a murder. It's also about an unfaithful husband, an illigitimate child, and a suicide, topics Miss Austen tended to stay away from.  

The story takes place 6 years after Elizabeth and Darcy were married and they are now residing at Pemberley with their 2 young sons and Darcy's sister, Georgiana. The night before their annual ball, all is thrown into confusion when Elizabeth's sister, Lydia, arrives in a panic saying that her husband, Wickham, has been murdered. If you've read Pride and Prejudice you may think that's not altogether bad news, but murder is murder and some of the men rush out to find him. When they do, he is alive and kneeling over the body of his comrade, Denny, weeping that it's his fault and that he has killed his very good friend. The rest of the story tells about the investigation into what happened and how, who the guilty party is, and the secrets the investigation reveals.

I'm sure it's not easy to write about previously established characters and keep them true to the original author's intent, but this one goes a little too far off track. "Elizabeth knew that she was not fomed for the sad contrivances of poverty" didn't feel like something Austen's Elizabeth would think or say. And when Darcy concluded "The price he had paid in bribing Wickham to marry Lydia had been the price of Elizabeth", it sounded nothing like his Austen character. He had intervened in that situation out of his feeling of responsibility, not to purchase Elizabeth's affection. And the suggestion that Elizabeth's affection could have been bought is not at all true to her character. 

I do enjoy P.D. James writing and this one wasn't bad as a murder mystery, but it messed with the characters too much for me.

A Severed Wasp by Madeleine L'Engle

Beautifully written, as expected, but with enough secrets and tragedy to fill a season of soap operas. The main character, Katherine, a retired concert pianist, returns home in retirement to give out more wise advice to others than any one person could or possibly, should. Though I knew I should like and admire her, she was a bit too stand-offish to get close to. I loved the setting (a cathedral in New York City), and all the art and music references, but the pace was slow and the plot a little too much to be believed. All that said, it's not a bad story and the good writing alone is probably reason enough to read this one.