Book Review: The Deception at Lyme (Or, The Peril of Persuasion) by Carrie Bebris

Being a massive Jane Austen fan, I’m also something of a sucker for spin-offs that do fun things with her characters. Though I have strong opinions on some of the ones that didn’t work as well for me. This is a fun, reasonably fluffy, series in which Mr. and Mrs. Darcy play amateur detectives while encountering all manner of characters from other Austen novels in the context of cozy murders. The writing is competent, though not scintillating (and without a serious attempt to mimic Austen’s own prose). There were a few plot holes one could drive a four-in-hand through and some of the character motivations were shaky, but that’s been an issue throughout the series and yet I keep reading them. This is the sixth in the series, of which there are seven in total, and as the title suggests, brings in the characters from Persuasion, as well as a few other Austen-based side characters.