Brenda H. (booksinvt) - , reviewed on 6/22/2019 + 465 more book reviews

Pride, Prejudice and Poison is the debut of the A Jane Austen Society Mystery series set in the English village of Kirkbymoorside in Yorkshire and features antiquarian bookstore owner Erin Coleridge and members of the local Jane Austen Society. It's time for the monthly meeting of the Society and tensions are running high between current President Sylvia Pemberthy and the younger members of the club who would like to see changes in the future. During a tea break, Sylvia collapses and dies, poisoned - and while nobody seems to be grieving over her loss, questions begin to swirl over which one of the members hated her enough to kill her.

The murder brings Detective Inspector Peter Hemming and his partner Sergeant Rashid Jarral to the sleepy town and they begin to point fingers at Erin's best friend, Farnsworth Appleby, know as the town's Tragic Widow and the Cat Lady. Despite warnings from the police not to get involved Erin takes matters into her own hands to clear her friends name.

If you aren't a fan of Jane Austen or familiar with her works, the story tends to bog down with the constant quoting of paragraphs and sayings from her books. For me it became a huge distraction from the plot, and made the entire cast of characters very difficult to like. It was fairly easy to pinpoint the murderer from the start and so I found myself just "slogging" along to the finish. Sadly, I don't think that I will be traveling to Kirkbymoorside again.

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