Determined to reach people like me, she has borrowed her most recent set and characters from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Ruinous matches, The Napoleonic Wars, early deaths, socially enforced female vulnerability: Austen keeps these shadows at bay, while James noses deep into them.Not much of a fan of murder mysteries, I’ve never before read anything by the formidable P.D. There's something even more profound, however, that James brings to her reading of Austen: In Death Comes to Pemberley, she ferrets out the alternative noir tales that lurk in the corners of Pride and Prejudice, commonly thought of as Austen's sunniest novel. Collins, the narrator here tells us that his canny wife, Charlotte, 'consistently congratulated him on qualities he did not possess in the hope that, flattered by her praise and approval, he would acquire them.' You'll recall the immortal first line of Pride and Prejudice: 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.' Well, James is much too wise to go toe to toe with Austen on that line, but she does produce some gentle Enlightenment zingers of her own. Naturally, then, James is adept at spinning out those skewering epigrams that we associate with Austen. Another commonality is that James' writing style has always had something of the 18th century about it: Think of all that formal, balanced poetry her detective, Adam Dalgliesh, cranks out. Money, one of Austen's chief themes, certainly lies at the heart of many a crime in James' mysteries. In so many ways, James and Austen are suspense sisters under the skin. To enjoy this mystery - which I did, enormously - you must take it on its own terms: Death Comes to Pemberley is a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, written in the spirit of what Graham Greene famously called 'an entertainment.' James is having fun in her own intelligent, literate way, and this novel is an invitation to her readers to join in the revels. James' new novel is called Death Comes to Pemberley: Think Pride and Prejudice meets 'Clue.'

What's even more tantalizing is the fact that James' latest mystery is also a tribute, of sorts, to one of her most cherished authors, Jane Austen.

James has taken up the challenge of feeding readers' holiday hunger for homicide.

This year, British mystery lovers in particular have a glorious plum pudding of a whodunit awaiting them. During the 50-plus years that Agatha Christie actively reigned as 'The Queen of Crime,' it became something of a tradition in England to give one of her novels as a holiday present in fact, she and her publishers popularized the slogan 'A Christie for Christmas.' Dame Agatha died in 1976, but the association of murder most foul and the yuletide season lingers.

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