In 1997 she was elected President of the Society of Authors. She has received honorary degrees from seven British universities, was awarded an OBE in 1983, and was created a life peer in 1991. She has won awards for crime writing in Britain, America, Italy and Scandinavia, including the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award and the National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature (US). She is an Honorary Bencher of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Society of Arts and has served as a Governor of the BBC, a member of the Arts Council, where she was Chairman of the Literary Advisory Panel, on the Board of the British Council, and as a magistrate in Middlesex and London. All that experience has been used in her novels. From 1949 to 1968 she worked in the National Health Service and subsequently in the Home Office, first in the Police Department and later in the Criminal Policy Department. JAMES was born in Oxford in 1920 and educated at Cambridge High School for Girls. For me, Death Comes to Pemberley worked better as a historical fiction novel about the criminal justice system of the time than as a mystery.P. It was fascinating, especially to this former lawyer. While I didn’t like certain aspects of Death Comes to Pemberley, I did like the exploration of criminal law at the time. But just because people then had a certain view and prejudice about people doesn’t mean they were right. To be fair, I think Darcy’s attitude towards Wickham was time period appropriate. Despite Wickhams’ track record, there was a “well of course Wickham cannot be a murderer because he’s not that type of person.” Told over and over. Or, rather, Darcy and others view of Wickham. The murder, or, rather, the death, involves Wickham (of course, because WICKHAM) and I found this version of Wickham perplexing. Elizabeth and Darcy have a couple of children, and I liked how that was handled. James wrote in the style of the novel, which while it made sense, didn’t make an easy read. The historical aspects of the novel were spot on.

Darcy - well, it seemed like Darcy was patting himself on the back a bit too much for marrying down in marrying Elizabeth. Where Colonel Fitzwilliam ended up disappointed me to the extent I didn’t find it believable. Elizabeth and Darcy didn’t get enough time together I was in Darcy’s head too much, Elizabeth’s too little. They seemed off, from my memory and my hopes for them. After the initial fun of seeing just where James put them in life, I didn’t much care for them. The main characters were not the way I imagined them. And, unfortunately for the book, I could not get to the point to read it as the book that it was. What happened? Death Comes to Pemberley became the classic case of not being the book I wanted it to be.

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