James takes on Austen, with little spark

DEATH COMES TO PEMBERLEY, by P.D. James. Alfred A. Knopf, 291 pp., $25.95.

First we had "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies." Now we get Pride and Prejudice and the Living Dead. At least that's what P.D. James' sequel to the Jane Austen classic could be called, given the lifelessness of its characters.

"Death Comes to Pemberley" certainly seemed like a good idea when it was announced earlier this year that the grand dame of crime fiction had written a murder mystery featuring Austen's "P&P" characters. James figuratively -- and at 91, almost literally -- has one foot in the 19th century, with crime solver Adam Dalgliesh emulating the Romantics in his poetry, and the other in contemporary times, with her psychologically astute portraits of the darker side of the way we live and die.

But here she finds herself in no man's land, as so many writers do in applying their skills to another writer's characters. By being so respectful of the enigmatic Darcy and the ebullient Elizabeth, James mummifies them. You don't want them to enter into a ménage a trois -- well, you sort of do, halfway through this book -- but couldn't she have given them some spark? And given us some reminder of what great adversaries they were before they tied the knot, a la Beatrice and Benedick from "Much Ado About Nothing"?

Instead of feeling some pang for her old flame, Wickham (who married her sister Lydia), Elizabeth now feels "self-disgust" over her past attraction. And instead of her former wry wit in "P&P," now her "heart was so full of love for her husband and trust in his judgment that there could be no room for criticism."

Come on, Lizzy, show some of that old spirit instead of this dreary deference to Darcy -- maybe an "Oh, Fitzwilliam, you can be such a prig." As it is, the couple and the story are so humor-impaired that "Death Comes to Pemberley" seems like an antimarriage tract. They do have a murder to attend to, but that didn't keep the spice out of Dashiell Hammett's Nick and Nora.

What about that mystery? Wickham and Lydia are traveling by coach to Pemberley when his friend, Captain Denny, bolts out of the carriage. Wickham goes after him and, when he's discovered with Denny's corpse, says he's responsible. That's taken as an admission, and Wickham is charged with the murder.

It's obvious, of course, that he didn't do it, or there wouldn't be much of a mystery. Not that it's a great mystery, anyway. It's all rather insignificant, compared to the complex motivations behind the murders in James' other books, and the crime-solving skills of Dalgliesh are nowhere to be found in any of the characters here.

In fact, there isn't really a central character. James merely bounces from the goody-goody observations of Elizabeth and Darcy to stick-

figure portraits of heartless justices and other inhabitants of the 19th century countryside -- the year is 1803, six years after the nuptials of Elizabeth and Darcy, and Bingley and Jane.

"Death Comes to Pemberley" has its virtues, particularly James' graceful writing and her look back in anger at the bloodthirsty justice system, lack of women's rights, the class system and nationalist warmongering. Some have accused Austen of not being sensitive to the world outside her own; James isn't guilty of that.

And a few characters do have a pulse, though they're all tertiary -- Lady Catherine de Bourgh, with the snobby wit that could have inspired Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell, and Elizabeth's father, whom we see much too little of. Then there's Wickham. He's almost worth rooting for, even if James didn't mean him to be. At least he has some genuine anger at the lifelessness around him, and the author does give him some good lines at the expense of self-righteous Darcy.

"Death Comes to Pemberley" will no doubt be a big hit, considering the commercial value of combining James and Austen, and it's obvious early on that nothing here will get in the way of a happily-ever-after marriage for Elizabeth and Darcy. But when I see the two of them living on, I imagine a lot less sanctimony. Maybe Darcy taking down his guitar and giving Elizabeth a chorus of "You make me dizzy, Miss Lizzy."