Pride and Prescience (Or, A Truth Universally Acknowledged) (#158) by Carrie Bebris is billed as "A Mr. & Mrs. Darcy Mystery", and is the first in this Jane Austen-based series. Mr. and Mrs. Darcy are looking forward to spending their first Christmas together as a married couple at Pemberly after the excitement and stresses of their wedding. Elizabeth's sister Jane tied the knot with Charles Bingley during the same ceremony, but Caroline Bingley did her best to steal the show by announcing her engagment and wedding in London the following week. And so, to do the polite thing, the Darcys go to London to attend the nuptials before setting out for Pemberly. To their astonishment shortly after the wedding, they find Caroline wandering the streets with a fat purse in a very unsavoury part of town with no knowledge of how she got there. Soon other accidents and mishaps stalk the entire Bingley family. Is Caroline a victim, or is she behind what's happening? Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam must unravel the pattern before someone close to them is harmed permanently.
I found this to be an enjoyable Regency mystery with the faintest whiff of the occult through an American connnection. This is not a mystery as Jane Austen might have written it, but the author sticks close enough to the characters in Pride and Prejudice to create a reasonable facsimile of the time and the place. Who didn't want to see the odious Caroline Bingley get her comeuppance? Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam as you might expect make a formidable team as they put together the disparate clues. I look forward to reading further entries in this entertaining series.
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