The Portraits of Pemberley (Austen University Mysteries)
Cozy Mystery
2nd in Series
Setting – Louisiana
Bayou Wolf Press (July 5, 2023)
Number of Pages – 285

Synopsis

After George Wickham is found tied up, naked, on the Austen University Campus Square, President de Bourgh gives student journalist Lizzy Bennet an ultimatum: Find out who committed the crime, or be expelled from the school. Lizzy must team up with some old friends (like the Austen Murder Club) and some new (like…Karoline Bingley?) to get to the bottom of the truth.

Complicating matters is the fact that the prime suspect is Fo-Hian Darcy. Darcy and Lizzy have a messy history, but even so, Lizzy just can’t accept that Darcy committed the crime. An anonymous whistleblower tips off Lizzy about a secret website called the Portraits of Pemberley that may help her get to the bottom of the mystery–but discovering the truth about who’s involved may very well challenge everything that Lizzy believes.

The Portraits of Pemberley is Book 2 of the Austen University Mysteries series but can be read as a standalone novel. It combines plot points of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice with Sense and Sensibility (and characters from all of Austen’s novels) in a modern-university setting, with mysteries.

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Guest Post

Pride and Prejudice – Reborn Again

 The first time I read Pride and Prejudice, I was 11 years old, and I found the book on my grandmother’s bookshelf. I recognized the title from a PBS show called Wishbone (*side note, I really miss Wishbone!) and decided to give it a try, without knowing much about the plot, characters, or time period.

I say all of this to preface that the first time I read the book, I was an unspoiled reader. I had never seen a film version, never heard of Jane Austen, probably never even read a marriage plot novel before. All of the twists and turns of the story were completely new to me. Each discovery that Elizabeth Bennet made about the characters she encounters throughout the novel were genuinely shocking to me. Realizing how the two main characters would finally come together in the end felt like a delightful, wonderful surprise.

In this day and age, it might be hard to read Pride and Prejudice with this same level of innocence. There are so many adaptations, along with variations that borrow from the Pride and Prejudice template (Bridget Jones’s Diary! Bridgerton!), that a complaint I often get from my students is that the plot of Pride and Prejudice feels cliche. I have to explain to them, patiently and through gritted teeth, that it isn’t cliche. It’s the Original Great, the O.G., of complex romance plots. Austen’s novel quite literally created the enemies to lovers template that many romance novels, films, television shows, etc., still follow today. If it seems familiar or predictable, that’s because this story has been retold again and again.

So why retell it yet again? That’s a question I’ve been asked a lot in the process of writing the Austen University Mysteries series, and a question I asked myself as I started out on this venture. Why resuscitate Austen in yet another form?

The most simple answer is that at the time I began putting together the series, I was writing my dissertation on Jane Austen adaptations. I was reading and watching hours upon hours of different Austen retellings, along with literary theory on film adaptation, and all of these ideas were constantly percolating in my brain so I could write my 200+ treatise on why Jane Austen adaptations matter. It was only natural that my own version would start to form in my mind and refuse to let me go until it came into the world.

The other reason, which is much less simple, is that I had never quite seen my version of Austen adapted before. As might be suggested from the fact that I wrote a dissertation on Austen adaptations, I am a fan! There are many versions that I have loved, and I’m one of those weird viewers who actually (often, but not always) appreciates changes made to the source material to create new experiences with my beloved characters and stories.

The thing about adaptations, though, is that even though they draw from the source material extensively, they can and should never be exactly like the original. If they were, then they wouldn’t be an adaptation. They would be a copy.

Because adaptations demand some form of change or adapting, they are a reflection of the creator’s experience with the original story. That’s why you’ll get retellings of Pride and Prejudice that focus mostly on the romance, because maybe that was the author’s favorite part of the story; or versions that hone in on a side character, because maybe that reader had some unanswered questions about what Mary Bennet got up to in her spare time; or versions that throw in pirates, because pirates are frickin’ awesome.

There have been some great retellings of Pride and Prejudice, and I don’t mean to take away from what anyone else has done by suggesting that I’d never seen my version brought to life before. But as a reader of Austen and an author, I had never found a retelling that truly matched my experience with the book. I wanted romance, yes, but also that biting, snarky, subversive wit that can catch you off-guard. I wanted unexpected twists and turns from characters you had started to trust. I wanted to bring in characters from Austen’s other novels, because I need to know how they would interact with each other. (And frankly, this has sometimes surprised me, too, as it comes out on the page!) I wanted to bring the characters into modern-day and put them in a university setting, because I wanted to see how these factors might change the characters we thought we knew. Last but not least, I wanted to add in some element of mystery/crime, because I didn’t want anyone to feel too safe about how their favorites might behave when the stakes get raised. Plus, mysteries are frickin’ awesome.

I’m aware that not everyone will see this as their version of the book, but I hope that some people will. For those who don’t, I of course hope that it will be an enjoyable journey nonetheless, but most of all, I hope it sparks a desire for readers to think about what their version of Austen would be. We can all use a little more Austen in our lives, and if there can be 5 million versions of Spider-Man, I think we can deal with a few more Elizabeth Bennets in the world.

About the Author

Elizabeth Gilliland is a writer, Dr., wife, mom, and lifelong Jane Austen fan. She is a playwright (whose plays have appeared off-off Broadway), a screenwriter (with a master’s in screenwriting and production), an academic (with a PhD and a dissertation on Jane Austen adaptations), and now a published author! When she isn’t writing or grading papers, she is most likely reading a good book, binge watching the latest hit, working on a puzzle, or hanging with her cute kid.

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