“When making new friends, pay less attention to what people say of themselves, more attention to how they behave. Truth is not in the telling but in the doing.”–Claudia Gray, The Murder of Mr. Wickham
A house party at the home of happily married Emma and Mr. Knightley brings together a group of old friends and new acquaintances, all of whom will be familiar to fans of Jane Austen. The one person who is not on the invite list is Mr. Wickham and when he appears on the Knightley’s door step in a storm, Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy are not the only ones unhappy with his arrival. It seems that Mr. Wickham is a nemesis to nearly all who are in attendance so when he is found dead from an apparent murder, there is a houseful of ready suspects. It is up to Jonathan Darcy and Juliette Tilney, children of characters from Austen’s books, to identify the murderer and keep an innocent person from the executioner.
This is the first in a series of books that feature Jonathan and Juliette as detectives in mysteries that involve characters from Jane Austen’s books. This book is not the strongest in the series, but it is important for letting the reader get to know our young sleuths. The series gets stronger as it goes along and the third book, The Perils of Lady Catherine de Bourgh is my favorite. I’ll let you know if that changes after I read the fourth book!
Content Advisory: death, assault