A review by ergative
The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray

5.0

 

The Jane Austen industrial complex is a mighty, sprawling domain: beyond the endless movie adaptations,1 we have multiple societies, costume festivals in Bath, literally thousands of works of fanfiction on Archive Of Our Own, some of which have made the jump to being traditionally published. This subset of published Jane Austen fanfics, much like the romance genre in general, is a microcosm of all the other genres of fiction. We have the literary; the horror; the science fiction; the smut; the Christmas twinkles; the modern retelling; and, of course, the detective story.

As the title may imply, The Murder of Mr Wickham falls squarely into this last category, and it is a triumph of the form. Where other Austen fanfics perhaps allow one or two of the novels to overlap, The Murder of Mr Wickham contrives to gather representatives from each of the Big Six at a house party at Donwell Abbey. Colonel Brandon from Sense and Sensibility is Emma’s cousin, and she wants to meet his charming new bride; Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot from Persuasion have let Hartfield after the death of Emma’s father, but need a place to stay after a staircase collapsed; Emma is friends with Catherine Moreland from Northanger Abbey (now ‘that wild lady novelist you befriended in Bath’), and wants to give her daughter, Juliet Tilney, some more society; Mr Darcy from Pride and Prejudice is a great friend of Mr Knightley’s (they were at Oxford together) and is coming to visit with his wife and eldest son, Jonathan Darcy; and Edmund Bertram from Mansfield Park is a cousin of Mr Knightley’s, and has accepted an open invitation to visit with his wife Fanny.

Then one night, Mr Wickham shows up, and the next night, he turns up dead. Whodunnit? Young Juliet Tilney, who discovered the body, and young Jonathan Darcy, who has the alibi of having been in the stables at the time (with the stablehand as witness) to comfort his horse during a thunderstorm, team up to solve the mystery.

The murder mystery itself is entertainingly constructed. With the same cleverness that Gray used to build connections between all the characters of the books,2 she also manages to construct a connection between Wickham and all the other characters. In this way, everyone an excuse to murder him. My own particular pet theory turned out to be wildly wrong, but the actual solution was one that I came up with about the same time Juliet and Jonathan started to consider it, so the pacing of revelation was exactly right. Perfectly satisfying, as far as murder mysteries go.

But really, what made this book so good was not the construction of the mystery—perfectly competent—but the brilliant way it wound everything together with a note-perfect understanding of each of the books’ characters, in some cases better than I thought Austen herself knew them, and in almost every case exactly aligned with my own reading of them. It felt like this book had been written exactly for me. The best example of this is Fanny and Edmund Bertram. No reader can find Fanny particularly fun or likeable, right? She’s such a drip! And no reader can find Edmund particularly loveable, right? He’s such an obnoxious, self-righteous asshole! My friends, Claudia Gray agrees with us. In every scene, Fanny is pale, weak, trembling, weeping, worrying. Everyone who sees it remarks upon it, how fragile, how delicate she is; how she always seems to be crying. And Edmund is constantly spouting the most tiresome platitudes about religious virtue and morality and blah blah blah—which is rather entertaining when he comes face to face with Mr Elton, but the rest of the time is such a drag. But, crucially, these characterizations are just over-the-top enough that they’re funny: I know, Claudia Gray is telling us, the reader. I know. Aren’t they tiresome? I hear you. Look, yes, they’re such tiresome drips! Yes, I agree.

And yet, by the end of the book, they’ve had quite a surprisingly touching character arc: Fanny shows a certain strength of character that is both unexpected (given what a drip she is), and also entirely consistent with her personality; and Edmund has shown a certain degree of personal growth that, given what we know about him and English moral codes of conduct, was not at all certain. In fact, his growth would not have been possible without Fanny—which, recall, is something Austen told us at the end of Mansfield Park: That if Fanny had agreed to marry Henry Crawford, she could have reformed him. As I think back upon it, I’m more and more surprised that Gray was able to both cast such delightful shade on the more tiresome aspects of their personalities, and also give them such a moving story through the course of the book.

This delicacy of touch appears in almost all of the couples.3 Because of the timeline that Gray assigns to the events of each book, we meet each of the characters at a different stage of their marriage: Colonel Brandon and Marianne are newly married, and still trying to figure out exactly what their relationship to each other is going to be. Colonel Brandon is well aware that he is not the dashing, romantic hero that Willoughby could have been, and that Marianne cannot love him with the impetuous passion that she felt for Willoughby. As with Fanny and Edmund, this again feels like Claudia Gray talking directly to us, the reader. I know, she’s saying: That was a rather sudden change of heart on Marianne’s part, wasn’t it? Let’s explore the consequences of that, just a bit. No, no, I haven’t forgotten that Brandon is old enough to be Marianne’s father. I know. It’s weird. Let’s talk about it. And she does talk about it, and by the end she has presented us with a reason why Marianne, hot-tempered, tempestuous Marianne, could feel a real love for Brandon that does not require her to change anything fundamental about her character. And, to be honest, I found that reason more satisfying and persuasive than the one which Jane Austen offers us at the end of Sense and Sensibility.

Knightley and Emma have also been married for long enough to have mostly-grown children, but their marriage is strained by the revelation that Mr Knightley has done something for his brother that causes complications. This doesn’t directly resonate with any of my immediate reactions to the end of Emma, but it does bring to mind a line in Chapter 12 that I’ve always found rather touching: . . . John Knightley made his appearance, and “How d’ye do, George?” and “John, how are you?” succeeded in the true English style, burying under a calmness that seemed all but indifference, the real attachment which would have led either of them, if requisite, to do every thing for the good of the other.

Elizabeth and Mr Darcy have been married the longest, and their marriage is strained because of a devastating loss that happened shortly before the beginning of this book. Much of their character arc involves coming to terms with their different reactions to this loss; and although that particular source of strain does not rise as organically from the events of their book as the others do, the repeated mentions of their private jokes and habits that they use to ease their return to each other are all direct call-backs to Pride and Prejudice: Elizabeth’s skill at playing piano, Darcy’s unwillingness to dance at balls, the tendency of young men to walk for a long time along paths that a young lady frequents in the hopes of meeting her there for a private conversation—all of these are brought up as little reminders of the solid foundation of their love as it reknits between them.

Beyond the deep character-dives and sophisticated wrangling of plot and character-connections, we also have repeated use of plot devices and themes that are familiar to a reader well-versed in Austen’s works. The weather and the state of the roads are vitally important; the ability of a poorly written address to make a letter arrive late reappears; the need for young ladies to play piano in public or otherwise show off their accomplishments is explicitly discussed; and, of course, we must have a ball. And, on top of this, we have some delightful turns of phrase that really capture the essence of what makes Austen’s wit so pleasing. Here is the first line, which told me I was in good hands:

The marriage of Mr and Mrs Knightley of Donwell Abbey had been a surprise to those who knew them best and not in the least surprising to those who knew them not at all.

Isn’t that great? The syntax and rhythm is perfectly Austenian, and the observation is a perfect encapsulation of the whole vibe of Emma. And there are many more such perfect lines, usually at the beginnings of chapters:

Breakfast is the least formal of meals, which often makes it the most pleasurable.

‘There is only so much entertainment,’ Emma sighed, ‘to be found in a tomato.’

There is no plan so pleasant, no expectation so cherished, that someone cannot be found to disapprove of it.

This book would not, I think, work nearly as well for someone who has not read and re-read the Big Six books. The connections between the characters are complex, and their motivations all depend on their backstories, which are only very briefly mentioned. I needed to rely heavily on my previous knowledge to keep this elaborate web from getting tangled. And, beyond the basics of plot mechanics, a few very touching moments only work if you know the previous books well enough to understand why these references are so important. These are most common with the Darcys. I’ve mentioned a few character moments between Elizabeth and Mr Darcy before, but there is also a letter from Elizabeth’s sister Mary that reveals what her fate was in this version of the Austenverse, and it’s just lovely.

This is a book by an Austen fan, for Austen fans. It was perfect.

1Chief among them, of course, being the famous wet shirt from BBC’s Pride and Prejudice, which is widely credited with reaching beyond the Jane Austen oevre and making its appearance in all Regency-era romance.

2It is worth paying attention to the Author’s Note about the timeline of events, if you are perplexed at how the Darcys and Tilney’s can have grown children, while Brandon and Marianne have been married less than a year

3The only real post-marriage story that doesn’t quite work is that of Captain Wentworth and Anne: Gray decided to make Wentworth hot-headed /prideful, and I simply don’t remember any of that from the book.