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Jane and the Unpleasantness of Scargrave Manor | Stephanie Barron

Jane Austen turned sleuth! Barron is a big Austen fan and has chosen to star Jane in a series of murder mysteries. This first finds Jane at the country home of a friend whose husband is murdered. This friend and the viscount’s nephew (and heir) are suspected of colluding in the murder and Jane must prove their innocence. At stake is not only the viscount’s estate and fortune, but the lady’s Caribbean holdings. And there is a threat to the crown. The disdainful Lord Harold Trowbridge helps Jane in her pursuit of justice.

Barron sets up the story as from recently discovered journals and letters from Austen herself. The device is rather heavy handed as in the pretense of footnotes explaining some of the historical references or references to Austen’s “letters”. She writes well in Austen’s style and this is a good series if you are seeking light entertainment.

The second book in the series, Jane and the man of the cloth, evokes Pride and Prejudice. I was figuratively screaming at her for being taken in by Captain Fielding as Eliza Bennett was taken in by George Wickham. He She, of all people, should have known better than to be taken in by slanders against a gentleman from a new acquaintance.  The Captain and a laborer are murdered. Geoffrey Sidmouth of High Down Grange is charged with murder. As in book 1, Jane rises to the occasion to save the falsely accused master of the grange - and once again meets the mysterious Lord Harold  who helps her apprehend the real murderer, and determine what is really going on at the Grange.

The Jane and the Unpleasantness of Scargrave Manor | Stephanie Barron by plnkh, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 5:02 pm by plnkh and is filed under Book Review. Find similar posts by selecting and of the following tags: . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.