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sarahc1900 's review for:
Death Comes to Pemberley
by P.D. James
2.5 Stars. As a fan-fiction sequel to Pride and Prejudice: Fail. As a coherently written mystery story: Moderate success. The thing I missed most (and that I would have put my writing energy into if I were trying to write a sequel to an Austen book) was the lively characterization that Austen is known for. This was like Pemberley from 3,000 feet. There were a couple of moments in the story where James zoomed in and was successful in recreating a shadow of the characters that I loved from P&P -- namely Mr. Bennett at one point, and Darcy and Elizabeth right on the second to last page and last page of the book. However, for most of the book, it seemed like the dialogue and characterization were of the character that mine were when I used to play with dolls in dollhouse --stiff and unrealistic. The plot was decent, but not particularly intriguing. It was well-spun, but the unraveling of the mystery at the end was a bit painfully long and detailed, and the climax lasted about 2 seconds when I really didn't want to put the book down. However, it wasn't horrible, and I didn't feel it was a waste of my time. I just found myself wishing that I could have been written better.