Jane and the Man of the Cloth

I too was a little hesitant to start this Jane Austen series, but my love for historical mysteries drove me to try. I am glad that I have begun the series. This is the second book in the series, and it is better than the first. There is everything here, romance, intrigue, smugglers, spys and of course Jane Austen at the centre of it. It is located in Lyme during September of 1804, right smack in the mddle of the tension between France's Napoleon and England. Jane loves Lyme, and does not expect it to be a hotbed of intrigue, and with deaths occurring in unexplained ways. She sets out to unravel the mystery when a man she has met is arrested for the murder of another young man that Jane had met and danced with at the weekly assembly. She certainly gets more than she bargained for, and finds herself in some danger when she is very close to solving the mysteries in Lyme. This series is excellent, and I can't wait to read the next one.

Not only did this book offer tingling suspense, but it provided lots of information about Lyme, England, Regency mores, and early Free Trade. Stephanie Baron is remarkable in her ability to project Austen's personality as I know it into these mysteries. During my reading of the book, I "solved" the identity of the Reverend with every male character in the book and yet never considered the actual male who had that title. This mystery was thrilling and to end the book was bittersweet.

I was somewhat reluctant to read the Jane Austen mysteries at first, fearing the stories would be poorly written as some Austen sequels are. But I was pleasantly surprised with the first Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor. I liked the first well enough to indulge in reading this book, the second in the series - this one surpassed the original. More tension, more questions as to who is friend and who is foe, a little bit of romance, and the surprising twist at the end of who is the enemy and the aid of friends from the past. All makes for a wonderful book, a delightful mystery from beginning to end.

I chose to comment on this book because it is my particular favorite in the series, though I much enjoyed all the others. I have read and re-read all of the "real" Jane Austen novels with much delight (except Mansfield Park, which was peculiarly hard going). IMHO the reviewers who compare Ms. Barron's "Jane" with the "real" Jane Austen, are missing the point. The "Jane as detective" works by Ms. Barron are truly "entertainments," the delightful results of a fanciful and imaginative reconstruction of history as it might have been, with humor and astute social observation to the fore. Whether or not Ms. Barron's novels depict the "real" Jane, I will leave to readers to judge, but for my own part, Ms. Barron's "Jane" is every bit as lovable as Emma (my favorite heroine), and reading the Barron series left me wanting to reread all of my favorite Austen novels, with the added resolve of trying to slog my way through Mansfield Park.

I am a real fan of Ms.Barron's work. She handles the difficult Regency world with skill and scholarship. No mere writer of costume novels in which 21st Century people wander about in period clothing and settings doing 21st Century things, she truly has an ear for the dialect and an eye for the rich detail of the early 19th Century.The mysteries themselves, while slight, are great fun and are satisfyingly dealt with. Miss Austen and her social set are well drawn and lively. One could do much worse than ordering up a set of these engaging stories.