This guest review comes from Lisa! A longtime romance aficionado and frequent commenter to SBTB, Lisa is a queer Latine critic with a sharp tongue and lots of opinions. She frequently reviews at All About Romance and Women Write About Comics, where she’s on staff, and you can catch her at @thatbouviergirl on Twitter. There, she shares good reviews, bracing industry opinions and thoughtful commentary when she’s not on her grind looking for the next good freelance job.
A full out delight of a historical mystery, Miss Caroline Bingley: Private Investigator gives us a different perspective on snobby, self-invested Caroline Bingley of Pride and Prejudice fame. While some fans of the book might not be into this notion, here she’s a smart, resourceful, witty, staunch character and a good detective — and someone who manages to bring comfort and support to her other women. Gardiner and Kumar don’t sand off her rough edges, either — she can be prickly, quick to judge and standoffish in turns. But this yields a wonderfully rounded out character and results in a great mystery, though it does have a couple of minor flaws.
It’s been two years since Charles Bingley and Jane Bennet and Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy married. Charles and Jane now own a home near Pemberley, and Caroline is staying with her brother, having embraced spinsterhood and grown as a person out of the biting, snarky woman she once was. While dealing with a meaningless social whirl she dislikes, Charles’ spending habits, and feeling like an accessory, Caroline pines for more. She has managed to strike up a friendship with Georgiana Darcy, though, so the situation hasn’t been entirely hopeless. Everything changes when she gets a letter from Georgiana announcing that she’s hieing off to London and expects Caroline to say she’s staying with Caroline and the Bingleys, having lied to the Darcys about her whereabouts.
When Georgiana disappears after her departure, Caroline goes to track her down in spite of the winter chill. Georgiana’s reason for leaving turns out to be that Georgiana’s ladies maid, Jayani “Jade” Smith, has disappeared from the household abruptly. With Colonel Fitzwilliam acting as Georgiana’s guardian and allowing her to stay in his home, the two women go looking for Jade. Caroline does indeed find her – but at a dire time, and at the scene of her beloved brother’s murder, crying over his bloodstained body.
Jade is immediately charged with the crime, but Caroline thinks she’s innocent and being railroaded by a racist investigation. With circumstances too fluid and dire to take the risk of involving either Darcy or Charles in the matter, Caroline decides to roll up her sleeves and investigate the matter herself. The two women and Caroline’s loyal and dry-eyed butler, Gordon, promptly begin looking into the case. The East India Company turns out to be involved – and as Caroline and Georgiana learn about the ugliness of their trade, they soon find themselves in just as much danger as Jade.
Caroline Bingley, Private Detective is one of those rare Pride and Prejudice continuations that has me yearning for more – a whole series of mysteries featuring Caroline and Georgiana growing as they help save the innocent. While this Caroline has her canonically-based staunch sense of reality, she’s managed to grow into a different sort of woman since we last saw her. Some might find this uncanonical – she’s perhaps a little too worldly, a little more understanding of the ways of others. But that doesn’t mean she’s been sanitized – she still shows flashes of snobbishness which stops her from being transmogrified into a saint.
She still feels the need to protect Georgiana’s innocence, even though Georgiana has read Darcy’s newspapers and knows far more about the world than Caroline might guess. Their friendship is an intriguing change to the novel’s strictures, and it really helps embellish this mystery. For Georgiana it’s a real growth story and very much about coming out of her shell and experiencing the world.
I liked Jayani as a character, and definitely rooted for her freedom and wanted to see her be happy and keep growing. The mystery she introduced to the book was interesting, though not without its predictable twists, which made me mark this book down from a squee-level read. Gordon was an interesting addition to the pack – very knowing of Caroline’s flaws, but also willing to help both women out. His many talents were fun to witness — the only butler in the world who can kick butt and take names with the best of them.
The research here is pretty fantastic – I knew something about the East India Company and Britain’s involvement in the slave trade even after slavery had been abolished, but the book does a great job in filling in those blanks and pointing out the evils that were done.
As for romance, there’s only the slightest whisper of it to be had here, but perhaps some of the sparks that fly between Caroline and the men in her life might be built upon in later volumes. Perhaps in future sequels there might be kissing, but this volume is rather light on the romance. But even if we only end up with one volume of Caroline’s adventures, this is enough to amuse and enchant the reader. Miss Caroline Bingley: Private Detective is a total delight, and as a cozy mystery fan I took great joy in reading it. I’m very picky about Pride and Prejudice continuations, but this one definitely hit the spot for me.