‘I have to apologise to Jane Austen for involving her beloved Elizabeth in a murder investigation but this fusion of my two enthusiasms – for the novels of Jane Austen and for writing detective
stories – has given me great pleasure which I hope will be shared by my readers.’
When you’re over 90 and have received seven honorary degrees from various universities without ever having gone to university in the first place, you can do pretty much whatever you like. And if it’s prolonging the life of one of English literature’s best loved heroines, so much the better. (Especially if you’re Faber & Faber.)
The astonishingly sprightly PD James has gone one step further than all of us who idly wondered what became of Elizabeth and Darcy when they got hitched having spent all of thirty minutes in each other’s company (and most of it spent bickering). The cynics among us might judge the end of Pride and Prejudice an unsatisfactory cop-out. Courtship is one thing but marriage is the crux of the problem; how an earth do Elizabeth and Darcy keep that spark? According to the grande dame of crime fiction, however, they filled their time solving murders. Her rather dully titled Death comes to Pemberley is probably more tasteful than other Austen-inspired pulp including – and believe me, there are a few – Vampire Darcy’s Desire; North by Northanger; Suspense and Sensibility.
Austen aside, resurrecting dead authors seems to be somewhat of a trend at the minute. Horowitz has just done a dutiful Holmes. Ian Fleming’s estate is pumping out books like a tired old tart. And Quercus are surely rubbing their hands with glee at the possibility of Lizbeth Salamander’s new adventures.
In a similar but perhaps less venal vein, Maeve Gilmore not only imaginatively pieced together her dead husband Mervin Peake’s preliminary notes for the next Gormenghast book but also completed the unfinished manuscript. Though her resurrection of Gormenghast – only to lay him to rest in Sark – was a moving tribute, its attempt to make her husband’s oeuvre live on was ultimately self-defeating. It’s hardly that one shouldn’t publish posthumously; otherwise the Aeneid would have ended up as kindling or The Trial burnt alongside Kafka’s extensive pornography collection. But if it’s not your work, writing an end to something seems rather presumptuous. What if Max Brod had told us what happens to Joseph K. Or David Foster Wallace’s agent had decided on a happy end for The Pale King?
Perhaps that’s why PD James’ unlikely tribute to Austen is more than just a well-deserved creative indulgence and better than World Book Night’s pointless exercise of giving Pride and Prejudice away. She’s kept a safe enough distance from the original to counter charges of sacrilege. And not only is it going to earn lots of money for Faber, which they can pump into promoting new authors, but it should send people back to the original.
But, it is a pity PD James chose such an accessible piece of literature. She should have jazzed up some classic that most feel guilty for not having ploughed through. In fact, that’s a rather good idea. A Lee Child rewrite of Ulysses. A Jeffrey Archer adaption of In Search of Lost Time (abridged). A Louise Bagshawe take on The Waves with a bit more sex and maybe a few more laughs.
And bonus, they’d all make a bloody good TV series.
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