All Barron books are enjoyable, but this one particularly so
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This is the sixth Stephanie Barron book. All are based on a set of diaries supposedly written by Jane Austen and found in a cellar in Baltimore. They are all thoroughly enjoyable, but this one particularly so. The author always chooses a snippet from Jane's life and weaves the whole story around it. In this one, she and her family are in lodgings in Southampton, and brother Frank is hopeful being posted to a new ship. The trouble is - and where the story starts - is that the captain of the ship, who is a friend, has been accused of murder. It looks as if Frank will get his ship and promotion only if his friend is hung.
Jane Austen was, of course, a Georgian and not a Victorian; she does not swoon when faced with the grimmer side of life. And life in a seaport during the Napoleonic Wars was grim. French prisoners of war are imprisoned and dying of goal-fever in the Wool House but that is where Jane's investigation into the background of the murder leads her. She travels to and from between Southampton and Portsmouth by ship, finds herself in the red-light district, and is faced with the realisation that her much-loved brother has been changed by the realities of war into a much tougher character than she had realised. Childbirth, home life, the need to dress fashionably on very little money - all come vividly to life. So to, do the very real changes since that period. Jane is only 31 but admits that she has 'lost her youthful bloom'; her friend, Martha, in her early forties, is settled into middle-age; children from the age of five are on board war ships, running errands and carrying gunpowder.
The author is a life-long admirer of Jane Austen and never strikes a discordant note. The unravelling of the mystery is well done, satisfactory, and leaves you waiting for the next one. Val Whitmarsh
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