In Death Comes to Pemberley, P. D. James masterfully recreates the world of Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice, and combines it with the excitement and suspense of brilliantly-crafted crime fiction.
The world is classic Jane Austen. The mystery is vintage P.D. James.
The year is 1803, and Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet have been married for six years. There are now two handsome and healthy sons in the nursery, Elizabeth's beloved sister Jane and her husband Bingley live nearby and the orderly world of Pemberley seems unassailable. But all this is threatened when, on the eve of the annual autumn ball, the guests are preparing to retire for the night when a chaise appears, rocking down the path from Pemberley's wild woodland. As it pulls up, Lydia Wickham - Elizabeth Bennet's younger, unreliable sister - stumbles out screaming that her husband has been murdered.
Two great literary minds - master of suspense P.D. James and literary icon Jane Austen - come together in Death Comes to Pemberley, a bestselling historical crime fiction tribute to Pride and Prejudice. Conjuring the world of Elizabeth Bennet and Mark Darcy and combining the trappings of Regency British society with a classic murder mystery, P.D. James creates a delightful mash-up that will intrigue any Janeite.
From the bestselling author of The Murder Room, Children of Men and A Certain Justice, comes a wonderful mixture of the nation's greatest romance and best-loved crime fiction. In 2013, this novel was adapted as a miniseries by the BBC, starring Matthew Rhys as Darcy, Anna Maxwell Martin as Elizabeth Bennet and Jenna Coleman as Lydia Wickham.
James, P. D.
P. D. James (1920-2014) was born in Oxford and educated at Cambridge High School for Girls. From 1949 to 1968 she worked in the National Health Service and subsequently in the Home Office, first in the Police Department and later in the Criminal Policy Department. All that experience was used in her novels. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Society of Arts and served as a Governor of the BBC, a member of the Arts Council, where she was Chairman of the Literary Advisory Panel, on the Board of the British Council and as a magistrate in Middlesex and London. She was an Honorary Bencher of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple. She won awards for crime writing in Britain, America, Italy and Scandinavia, including the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award and The National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature (US). She received honorary degrees from seven British universities, was awarded an OBE in 1983 and was created a life peer in 1991. In 1997 she was elected President of the Society of Authors, stepping down from the post in August 2013.
Tributes to P.D. James (1920- 2014)
From Stephen Page's Tribute to P.D. James , given at the Memorial Service in London
on 29th April, 2015
Phyllis had a long writing career of over fifty years that began surprisingly late. She embarked on Cover Her Face in her mid-thirties. In her autobiography, Time to Be in Earnest, she admitted some regret that she didn't start earlier, saying that 'a streak of indolence . . . made it more agreeable to contemplate the first book rather than actually write it'. Yes, the well-known indolence of P. D. James!
....
Despite a later start she leaves an impressive body of work comprising nineteen brilliant and original novels, and three works of non-fiction, all of which continue to be read throughout the world. To her the choice of detective fiction was simply obvious, but she made it her own and stamped an originality and literary quality upon the genre like no other writer before her. She said that she wrote detective novels for the reasons readers are fascinated by them, for what she called 'the catharsis of carefully controlled terror' and the bringing of order out of disorder.
....
The story of her arrival at Faber is well known. At a dinner at All Souls, Elaine Greene, Phyllis's newly acquired agent, sat next to Charles Monteith, a director from Faber. He said that Faber was looking for a new detective-fiction writer since the recent death of Cyril Hare, and Elaine replied, 'I think I have what you are looking for.' Faber took on Cover Her Face in 1960, prompting the marvellous image of Phyllis, in her own words, 'prancing up and down the hall' on hearing the news. A treasure in the Faber Archive is the first book report, written by a perceptive female editor who quickly saw Phyllis's talent, and also perhaps one of the less discussed keys to the success of the Dalgliesh books. She commented that maybe it required a male editor's opinion, and I quote, 'I . . . got rather carried away by the inspector's compelling blue eyes.'
Inspector Dalgliesh was never far from Phyllis's thoughts, and not, I think, for his blue eyes. He is a good man, a poet, and he stands and speaks for Phyllis's humanity, a humanity that meant she could imagine what it was to be so overrun by desire or envy or anger or vengefulness that a person would commit a terrible crime. This gives the books their toughness and believability, and makes the reader's feeling for Dalgliesh all the greater as he seeks to restore order. Phyllis's compassion and love is visible both in and for Dalgliesh. Her kindness to her hero in the last three books, with his marriage to Emma - with more than a nod to her beloved Jane Austen - is so moving, and gives her readers the most encouraging and deeply affecting portrait of love's healing power. It's a gift to us all, as also are the final pages of Death Comes to Pemberle
James, P. D.
P. D. James - awarded an OBE in 1983 and made a life peer in 1991 - was the bestselling, internationally acclaimed author of eighteen crime novels including the Adam Dalgliesh and Cordelia Gray series, The Children of Men and two posthumously published collections of short stories. She won numerous awards for crime writing, including the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award and CWA Diamond Dagger, the highest honour in British crime writing.
Darcy, who was standing by the window, gave a sudden exclamation.
'My God! What does that fool of a coachman think he's doing? He'll have the whole chaise over! This is madness. And who on earth are they? Elizabeth, is anyone else expected tonight?'
'No one.'
Elizabeth and the rest of the company crowded to the window and there in the distance saw a chaise, lurching and swaying down the woodland road towards the house, its two side lights blazing like small flames. It was too distant for the wheels to be heard and it seemed to Elizabeth that she was seeing a spectral coach of legend, flying soundlessly through the moonlit night, the dreaded harbinger of death.
Über den Autor
P. D. James was a bestselling and internationally acclaimed crime writer. She was the creator of Adam Dalgliesh and Cordelia Gray, and their long and successful series of mysteries. Her works include Cover Her Face (1962), An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972), Innocent Blood (1980), Children of Men (1992), and the Jane Austen-inspired Death Comes to Pemberley (2011). James was born in Oxford in 1920. She won awards for crime writing in Britain, America, Italy and Scandinavia, including the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award. She received honorary degrees from seven British universities, was awarded an OBE in 1983 and created a life peer in 1991. In 1997 she was elected President of the Society of Authors, and stood down from this role in 2013.
Klappentext
As it pulls up, Lydia Wickham - Elizabeth Bennet's younger, unreliable sister - stumbles out screaming that her husband has been murdered. Two great literary minds - master of suspense P.D. Conjuring the world of Elizabeth Bennet and Mark Darcy and combining the trappings of Regency British society with a classic murder mystery, P.D.
P. D. James masterfully recreates the world of Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice, and combines it with the excitement and suspense of brilliantly-crafted crime fiction
