Inevitably, therefore, she needs to use more description, and the dialogue will sometimes appear stilted - verbose, even - to the 21st century reader.

And let's not forget that whereas Jane Austen could rely on her readers understanding the customs of the day, PD James has to work harder, since over 200 years separate her audience from them.

PD James, cleverly, imo, uses a prose-style which is broadly 19th century, reminiscent of Trollope, Dickens or indeed Austen herself without aping them slavishly. I received this book a mere 48 hours ago, and - at the risk of being hopelessly out of sync with other reviewers - found it impossible to put down! I was enthralled from the opening paragraph to the end. So, if you are not too much carried away by unrealistic expectations of the book, you should be glad for it and may want to read it repeatedly, not the least due to the beautiful English, in which the work is written. The suspense is, of course, somewhat muted in comparison with today's action-packed works, but the plot does not lag behind some James' later detective works too much, which is a good thing – taking into account that 'Death Comes to Pemberley' is first and foremost a Jane Austen tribute. The result is a realistic detective story, of course, handled as it would be back then, when no police or private detectives existed, as we know them now. James cleverly thinks up the continuation of unlawful activites on the part of some minor characters from 'Pride and Prejudice', nicely following up in terms of Jane Austen-inspired writing style. One of Dame James last works of her prolific life and career, was 'Death Comes to Pemberley', a faux-sequel to Austen's best-known and very much loved classic, 'Pride and Prejudice' – picking up the plot a few years after the main characters from the latter, Darcy and Lizzie, had settled down in a happy marriage. Almost two decades later, when approaching 90, she divulged about her an interesting fact – being a great fan of Jane Austen works, deeply felt and detailed romantic novels from 200 years ago. In Bratislava, at Faculty of English and American studies, she left a wonderful impression of a feisty, charming and smart lady, the 'mother' of detectives Adam Dalgliesh and Cordelia Gray. James once, short after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, visited my university (where I started attending two years later).

Death comes to pemberley book review