The Bennets are back! Elizabeth is living at Pemberley with her husband Mr. Darcy and two children. The night before the yearly Lady Anne's Ball, there is a murder in the woodland on the Pemberley estate. Lydia's husband, Lieutenant George Wickham, is involved.
Such fun to visit the Bennets again. And the language is so appropriate! I am not a fan of murder mysteries and will not likely read another one, but this author fascinates me.
Phyllis Dorothy James was born in 1920.
She has written 20 novels, but has also done many other things in her life. She spent 40 years working in the British Civil Service, including the Police and Criminal law Department. She also served as a magistrate and director of the BBC. She is a Life Peer in the House of Lords. What a lady!
James was married in 1941 to an army doctor, who returned from W.W.ll suffering from mental illness. He spent the rest of his life in a psychiatric hospital, while their daughters were raised by grandparents.
James was then able to pursue many interests and collect ideas for future books.
She wrote about the Bennets when she was 91 years old! Amazing!
I haven't logged in in a while so I haven't commented lately. But reading this reminded me of when our book group did this book. Betty is so right. The language is captured perfectly. PD James has a brilliant... ear. As an author, she doesn't mimic or copy Austen. Her logic and thinking through observation carries a 21st century sensibility. Of course, they mystery genre is a more recent phenomenon so that is not like Austen. But she writes as though Jane Austen went straight from her own time, had a couple of children and a bit of experience, adapted to married life and our own sensibilities too. Of course it is still set in the past, but it is thoroughly modern. I wonder if being PD James nowadays is how this happened so well. A woman of a century ago with her finger on the modern reader's pulse. And the book group LOVED it.
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