The Late Mrs. Willoughby

I loved The Murder of Mr. Wickham, and was excited to hear the series continues with this second installment. (This new entry stands alone—though the perpetrator of Book 1’s crime is referenced in the opening pages.) Jonathan Darcy (son of Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam) and Juliet Tilney (daughter of Catherine and Henry) seek to investigate the sudden death of Mr. Willoughby's unhappy wife, formerly Miss Sophia Grey, who suffers a very public death by poisoning at a dinner party at Barton Park hosted by Sir John Middleton. The premise—that all the characters in Austen's six major works are somehow all in each other's social orbits—continues to be audacious, but this book is such good fun for Austen fans and mystery lovers. For fans of P.D. James’s Death Comes to Pemberley and Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders.