JANE AND THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER

Troubled by ill health, Jane Austen repairs with her sister, Cassandra, to Cheltenham Spa for the waters and finds the place anything but restorative.

The volcanic ash from an Indonesian volcano is blanketing Europe, making 1816 the year without a summer. Things are equally bleak for the Austen family, still recovering from recent financial losses. Having lost his ship, the Phoenix, which his navigators ran aground, Jane’s brother Charles faces a ruling from the Admiralty Board about his personal responsibility. When Jane complains of weakness, her apothecary sends her to Cheltenham with orders to take the waters, which she finds vile—but no more disagreeable than her fellow lodger Miss Garthwaite; Miss Garthwaite’s ailing brother, Richard, a clergyman who’s quick to condemn everyone around him; or Viscount Granville Portreath, who descends on their rooming house in search of his wife, invalid poet Rose Williams. Thucydides, the Garthwaite pug, is poisoned. So are several rats who turn up in inconvenient places. But the worst arrives at a costume ball celebrating mad King George III’s Natal Day, when rescuers searching the Cheltenham Assembly after a fire breaks out find one of the guests stabbed to death. It’s not clear whether the victim was indeed the murderer’s target, but it’s clear that Jane will have to extricate herself from the attentions of Raphael West, a painter’s son who’d like to be more than her friend, long enough to follow the clues to the killer.

Full marks for background, plotting, and voice—though fans should know that this 13th case is darker than Jane’s first 12.