Where Jane Solves a Christmas Murder

Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas by Stephanie Barron
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book, like the entire series, is such a pleasure to read. It isn't just that Stephanie Barron gets the language of Jane Austen and the time right, which she really does, or that she gets the details so right, with the appropriate and measured inclusion of all of her meticulous research into Jane Austen's personal story. That's part of it, but not all. As a mystery writer, she has such a deft touch with clues and characters that readers like myself can master the details without growing confused, and can enjoy the story set during the twelve days of Christmas without constantly searching for missed connections or buried clues.

As an observer of human nature, Stephanie Barron always impresses, creating a wide range of characters and behavior while always making them feel familiar and real, their concerns genuine and their motivations human. And as a historian, she grounds the novel in the very real history of England after the loss of the colonies, during Napoleon's rise and fall and subsequent rise.

Sometimes, I appreciate Jane Austen novels (the original novels) for being set almost outside of time, in a bubble made up of the well-dressed and well-mannered, where members of that polite society mingle in balls and drawing rooms, engaging in witty and bright conversation, safe from the darkness of the outside world--our world. But I appreciate this novel, and whole series, for the opposite reason. The author vividly creates the time and place, establishing the characters in that timeline, so that it is real as our own world, so that it IS our world--no bubble--a place where war and invasion is the frequent topic of conversation and constant concern, where the poor and the unfortunate also have their roles and their lives, and where well-mannered ladies might sew tiny dresses for a niece's new doll or drink tea with the neighbors, but might also investigate a murder or regret the passage of time or feel the pain of grief and lost love. The author has done well to create such a real place, and people it with such engaging characters, and craft so satisfying a story.

I enjoyed this book, and I recommend it.

Edit [and spoiler] on rereading: Still love it. Still 5 stars. Still sad that Raphael West, a man similar in many ways to the "Gentleman Rogue" love-interest of the early books, a man who can appreciate our Jane for who she is and who she appreciates for who he is, does not end up with her in an HEA kind of way. I know it's impossible, because we know what really did and didn't happen to Jane Austen. She never married. But you still hope, kinda. And I forgot how the same man appealed to her sister Cassandra, and how she had a hope for a short period of time. It's a bummer. We only know through Cassandra through Jane, but in real life (and in the novels, in our imaginations) she was someone who mattered, someone with her own wishes and dreams, and they don't matter less than those who we know better. Like her sister, Cassandra almost certainly had to leave many of those dreams behind. Poignant reminder about the inner lives of the quiet people in our midst...

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