Stephanie Barron is a prolific author with a CIA career background who has penned a series of mysteries with Jane Austen as lead sleuth and narrator. Currently in love with all things Georgian, I found this titillating, and while I’m admittedly late to the Jane Austen tea party - there are 14 books now - I am no less enthusiastic than early adopters, ever since having read my first cosy mystery featuring the renowned 19th century author as main character.
In the splendidly titled, Jane and the Year Without a Summer, Jane Austen travels to Cheltenham in May 1816 with her sister Cassandra upon advice of her doctor. It is hoped the iron-rich spa waters will invigorate her.
The Royal Well Spa, Cheltenham by Robert Cruickshank, published in The English Spy 1826
(Image courtesy of antiqueprints.com)
As they settle into their lodgings at Mrs Potter’s, we meet an eccentric cast of characters. Miss Rose Williams is a wheelchair-bound sylphlike young heiress. Her childhood friend and companion, Sarah Fox exerts a Wollstonecraft-ian feminist influence on her. Elegant Hannah Smith is a free-spirited actress with a secret shame who manages to outrage a moralistic Miss Garthwaite more than once, lending some spice to the dialogue. The reverend in Miss Garthwaite’s brother, James is inclined to sermonising at length uttering his, "Repent!" to all who would hear. In his eyes, the current sunless year can only spell doom:
“Are you aware—or as yet ignorant of the intelligence—that the warmth of the sun has been wrapped in a veil; that no man may say when it shall be torn asunder; and that perpetual winter shall wither crops in the fields, bringing desolation upon the multitude?”
As it turns out, much more than the historical climatic gloom is forthcoming.
But it wouldn’t be a Jane Austen story without a dash of romantic excitement for the author. So who should happen to also be visiting Cheltenham but her love interest, Raphael West? The younger women on the other hand, married or not, seem to be taken by the limping Captain Harry Pellew.
Faithful to the format of an Agatha Christie novel, simmering tensions are revealed between several characters, laying down suspicions and motivations for what is to come. The unexpected arrival of Miss Williams’ husband, alongside a beautiful and mysterious woman, sends the fragile Rose Williams into a frenzy of hysterics. Spendthrift Viscount Portreath is adamant that his wife should return home at once. Captain Pellew is not alone in his negative reaction to this. Sarah Fox wishes her friend, Rose to flee from her husband. A certain Dr Lionel Hargate who turns out as patronising as they get (especially with his dealings with our Jane), intervenes promptly against Miss Williams travelling, even while Sarah Fox insists her life is in danger.
It’s not long before we begin to suspect Lady Portreath‘s life might indeed be under threat. But there are more happenings brooding under the surface and it is just as well Jane Austen proves so insightful.
How about some poisoned macaroons with your tea?
A relaxing stay that ought to have consisted of sensible attendances to the theatre and visits to the Cheltenham library, unfolds with unexpected twists. A tea party with a case of poisoned macaroons, a disturbing pattern of dead rats, a tragic costume ball, anorexic behaviour in a distressed young woman, violent jealousy, and more fervent preaching about the apocalypse - there is much to entertain and transport as the suspense culminates into not one, but two vicious cold-blooded murders.
Luckily by this time, Miss Austen has brilliantly pieced together enough about her companions’ behaviour to solve the case in style.
This was an enjoyable historical cosy mystery even without the detective’s author credentials. I happily lost myself in the intrigue, while also exploring a bygone Cheltenham, and gasping at the rudeness of Miss Garthwaite’s classist remarks. A brilliant, entertaining story with vivid characters.
I haven’t opened a Jane Austen book in a long time so I admit that the language, faithful to her own, took a bit to get used to but twenty pages in, and I was delighted with its stile (style) and its spelling variations - I had somehow forgotten that one could chuse (choose) to spell panic as panick, and gothic as gothick. But setting aside my own ignorance, this deliberate adherence to Jane Austen’s form of expression is what made the text so transporting.
There are some delightful descriptions, as when we first meet Lady Portreath aka Miss Rose Williams :
"Flawless skin, tho’ too wan and pallid; shadowed eyes of cornflower blue; guinea-gold curls trailing from a deliciously upturned poke bonnet, a frail figure handsomely gowned—and yet all confined to the basket-chair of an invalid’s conveyance. There was a thinness, a languor, that spoke of suffering gallantly borne. Such a picture, eloquent of Divine gifts and burdens equally bestowed, must inspire the most sympathetic concern!"
With such evocative prose, I am in no doubt that a TV series producer will one day want to adapt Stephanie Barron’s Jane Austen mysteries.
I leave you with one last charming quote from Raphael West :
“Where are you ladies bound? May I cajole you to visit the Cheltenham Library? I mean to peruse the London papers; I have ruralised in ignorance long enough.”
Many thanks to Soho Crime from Soho Press for providing me with an ARC of this novel.
Jane and the Year Without a Summer is out on 8 February 2022.
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