Miss Caroline Bingley, Private Investigator
A Novel
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5.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
In this imaginative cozy mystery, the search for a missing maid leads Miss Caroline Bingley from Jane Austen’s beloved Pride & Prejudice into murder and mayhem in the gritty underbelly of Regency London.
Two years after her brother Charles Bingley weds Miss Jane Bennett, Miss Caroline Bingley is visiting her brother's country estate near Pemberley, the home of their best friends, Mr. and Mrs. Darcy. Restless and out of sorts, Caroline wonders if there's more to life than playing cribbage and paying calls on country neighbors.
When Georgiana Darcy's maid, Jayani disappears and Georgiana sets off to find her, Caroline races to to find them in London, where she stumbles on a shocking, cold-blooded murder. Reunited with Georgiana, the pair careen through the gritty, grimy underbelly of London, a world unfamiliar to two genteel aristocratic ladies. Assisted by Caroline's trusty manservant, Gordon, the tenacious Caroline demands answers of shady characters, police magistrates, and mysterious East India Company men to discover the killer. Their search will reveal the cost of Empire on India and its people . . . and Miss Bingley's incomparable powers of investigation.
As Caroline puts her superior new talents to work, she finds out exactly what an accomplished, independent woman with a sharp mind and a large fortune can achieve—even when pitted against secrets, scandal, and a murderer with no mercy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gardiner (Goddess) and Kumar provide a delightful addition to the growing ranks of Jane Austen–inspired mysteries with this cozy series launch. The fiercely independent Caroline Bingley, from Pride and Prejudice, is now Jane Bennett's sister-in-law. After Caroline's friend, Georgiana Darcy, leaves for London without explanation, a baffled Caroline tracks her down, and learns that she's searching for her missing maid, a young Indian woman she'd called Jade. Despite Georgiana's ignorance of "Jade's" actual name or biography, Caroline relishes the almost impossible challenge of locating her among London's masses. The situation escalates when "Jade"—whose real name is Jayani—is found at the scene of a murder. Caroline believes her insistence that she's innocent and resolves to find the killer, following a trail of clues indicating that the culprit is connected to the powerful East India Company. Refreshingly, Gardiner and Kumar don't sand down Caroline's less agreeable qualities, and instead use her flagrant classism and stubbornness to infuse the narrative with a welcome degree of friction. That character depth, plus a well-oiled whodunit plot, help this stand out in a crowded field. Austenites will look forward to the next installment.
