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sunnyskywalkerThe Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray is so great, you guys. The premise "Jane Austen characters do a country house murder mystery" is bound to be entertaining even if it isn't good, but this is also a really good book, and that's impressive.
It's 1820, and the Knightleys are hosting a semi-accidental house party. Darcy, Knightley's old friend from university whom he hasn't seen in years, is coming with his wife Elizabeth and their son Jonathan, a very handsome and very awkward young man. And whoops, his distant cousin Edmund Bertram has chosen now to take him up on that standing invitation to visit, and of course Edmund is bringing his wife Fanny. Except Emma has also invited her cousin Colonel Brandon and his new wife Marianne to stay, as well as Juliet, the nice young daughter of Catherine Tilney, that lady novelist Emma met in Bath. And what rotten luck that the staircase at Hartfield collapsed after years of neglect, meaning their tenants have to stay elsewhere until it's repaired. But Captain and Mrs. Wentworth seem like such nice people, so they'll be fine here for a while, right?
And then Mr. Wickham crashes the party. No one is happy to see him, to put it mildly. So when he turns up murdered, just about everyone is a suspect...
Except Jonathan Darcy, who has an alibi, and Juliet Tilney, who is pretty much the only person in the house with no motive. They have good reason to believe that the local magistrate, Frank Churchill, will try to pin the murder on an innocent servant. It's wildly improper for them to investigate, but surely it would be worse to let an innocent person be hanged? Of course it will be very bad if anyone catches them discussing the case alone together. "It's not what it looks like; we're just investigating the murder" wouldn't improve the situation.
The characters all have interesting, meaningful arcs that also relate to the mystery. Fanny, for example, has had a letter from her brother in the navy which she doesn't quite understand but makes her fear for his life--and she's afraid to tell Edmund, because he definitely won't understand. What does that mean for their marriage? Oh, and also Wickham steals the letter and tries to blackmail Fanny. Because of course he does. Yes, even Fanny has a motive to kill Wickham. Hm, maybe she isn't just weeping because she's sensitive and this is all so upsetting?
It's also impressive how controlled Gray is with the fanservice. Any modern novel with Austen's characters is going to contain gobs of it, because it's kind of the point, but Gray restrains it to things relevant to the novel. For example, it's mentioned that Lizzy's favorite color is yellow, but not just because Austen wrote that in a letter once and it had to get stuffed in somewhere; it's important because Lizzy's emerging from mourning for the niece she loved as a daughter and wearing a cheery yellow dress is a big step for her, and Darcy encourages her to wear in an attempt to reconnect since grief has made it hard for them to communicate lately. Jonathan notes that his parents have some private jokes he doesn't get (like "lack of practice" at the pianoforte), but this isn't just a cute callback for readers; it's part of showing how Jonathan hasn't been told everything the older generation got up to, along with what exactly were all the bad things Uncle Wickham did, and that he struggles to read between the lines of what people say and figure things like that out. Which is relevant to how he conducts his investigation. (I should mention here that while the characters in 1820 don't have the vocabulary to describe it, Jonathan is written as someone who might be recognized as autistic today. This causes some misunderstandings and sometimes puzzles his parents, but mostly his family loves him and Juliet accepts his "eccentricities" matter-of-factly, because her mom says everyone's a bit weird really, so why fuss about this particular set of oddities more than anyone else's?)
And then there's the timing. The author has a short introductory note about her fanon chronology of the books, which involves "a little cheating," but not much since only Persuasion can be absolutely placed in a definite time period. One of the cheating bits is to allow for Sense and Sensibility to have happened long enough after Pride and Prejudice that the man who first seduced Brandon's childhood sweetheart Eliza and so caused the divorce which ruined her could have been Wickham, already married to Lydia and unable to marry Eliza even if he'd wanted to. (This is revealed early on, so I don't think it counts as a spoiler.) And that happens not because it's a fun link between books for readers--though it is--but because it gives Brandon a motive for murder. He'd never been able to track down Wickham back in the day, and to have the man barge in now, of all times! When Brandon is realizing that Marianne's respect and affection aren't enough for him and he hopes that she really loves him, and isn't sure she does, and his insecurity is stirring up all these feelings and memories...
I wish I could somehow temporarily suppress my previous knowledge of Austen to see how this book would read without it, because I think it would work pretty well even if you only know, "Um, I guess these couples all fell in love and stuff in previous books? Wasn't Darcy kind of a jerk or something?" You get a lot more out of it with more Austen knowledge, but the book is also a proper story in its own right, not just a set of in-jokes with a vague smattering of plot to justify the fanservice. So yeah, this goes right up there with Leia, Princess of Alderaan as a model of How To Fanfic Well.
It's also set up to be complete while leaving open possibilities for sequels, which I dearly hope we get if they're even half as good as this one.
It's 1820, and the Knightleys are hosting a semi-accidental house party. Darcy, Knightley's old friend from university whom he hasn't seen in years, is coming with his wife Elizabeth and their son Jonathan, a very handsome and very awkward young man. And whoops, his distant cousin Edmund Bertram has chosen now to take him up on that standing invitation to visit, and of course Edmund is bringing his wife Fanny. Except Emma has also invited her cousin Colonel Brandon and his new wife Marianne to stay, as well as Juliet, the nice young daughter of Catherine Tilney, that lady novelist Emma met in Bath. And what rotten luck that the staircase at Hartfield collapsed after years of neglect, meaning their tenants have to stay elsewhere until it's repaired. But Captain and Mrs. Wentworth seem like such nice people, so they'll be fine here for a while, right?
And then Mr. Wickham crashes the party. No one is happy to see him, to put it mildly. So when he turns up murdered, just about everyone is a suspect...
Except Jonathan Darcy, who has an alibi, and Juliet Tilney, who is pretty much the only person in the house with no motive. They have good reason to believe that the local magistrate, Frank Churchill, will try to pin the murder on an innocent servant. It's wildly improper for them to investigate, but surely it would be worse to let an innocent person be hanged? Of course it will be very bad if anyone catches them discussing the case alone together. "It's not what it looks like; we're just investigating the murder" wouldn't improve the situation.
The characters all have interesting, meaningful arcs that also relate to the mystery. Fanny, for example, has had a letter from her brother in the navy which she doesn't quite understand but makes her fear for his life--and she's afraid to tell Edmund, because he definitely won't understand. What does that mean for their marriage? Oh, and also Wickham steals the letter and tries to blackmail Fanny. Because of course he does. Yes, even Fanny has a motive to kill Wickham. Hm, maybe she isn't just weeping because she's sensitive and this is all so upsetting?
It's also impressive how controlled Gray is with the fanservice. Any modern novel with Austen's characters is going to contain gobs of it, because it's kind of the point, but Gray restrains it to things relevant to the novel. For example, it's mentioned that Lizzy's favorite color is yellow, but not just because Austen wrote that in a letter once and it had to get stuffed in somewhere; it's important because Lizzy's emerging from mourning for the niece she loved as a daughter and wearing a cheery yellow dress is a big step for her, and Darcy encourages her to wear in an attempt to reconnect since grief has made it hard for them to communicate lately. Jonathan notes that his parents have some private jokes he doesn't get (like "lack of practice" at the pianoforte), but this isn't just a cute callback for readers; it's part of showing how Jonathan hasn't been told everything the older generation got up to, along with what exactly were all the bad things Uncle Wickham did, and that he struggles to read between the lines of what people say and figure things like that out. Which is relevant to how he conducts his investigation. (I should mention here that while the characters in 1820 don't have the vocabulary to describe it, Jonathan is written as someone who might be recognized as autistic today. This causes some misunderstandings and sometimes puzzles his parents, but mostly his family loves him and Juliet accepts his "eccentricities" matter-of-factly, because her mom says everyone's a bit weird really, so why fuss about this particular set of oddities more than anyone else's?)
And then there's the timing. The author has a short introductory note about her fanon chronology of the books, which involves "a little cheating," but not much since only Persuasion can be absolutely placed in a definite time period. One of the cheating bits is to allow for Sense and Sensibility to have happened long enough after Pride and Prejudice that the man who first seduced Brandon's childhood sweetheart Eliza and so caused the divorce which ruined her could have been Wickham, already married to Lydia and unable to marry Eliza even if he'd wanted to. (This is revealed early on, so I don't think it counts as a spoiler.) And that happens not because it's a fun link between books for readers--though it is--but because it gives Brandon a motive for murder. He'd never been able to track down Wickham back in the day, and to have the man barge in now, of all times! When Brandon is realizing that Marianne's respect and affection aren't enough for him and he hopes that she really loves him, and isn't sure she does, and his insecurity is stirring up all these feelings and memories...
I wish I could somehow temporarily suppress my previous knowledge of Austen to see how this book would read without it, because I think it would work pretty well even if you only know, "Um, I guess these couples all fell in love and stuff in previous books? Wasn't Darcy kind of a jerk or something?" You get a lot more out of it with more Austen knowledge, but the book is also a proper story in its own right, not just a set of in-jokes with a vague smattering of plot to justify the fanservice. So yeah, this goes right up there with Leia, Princess of Alderaan as a model of How To Fanfic Well.
It's also set up to be complete while leaving open possibilities for sequels, which I dearly hope we get if they're even half as good as this one.
