Jane and the Final Mystery
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3.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The final volume of the critically acclaimed mystery series featuring Jane Austen as amateur sleuth
March 1817: As winter turns to spring, Jane Austen’s health is in slow decline, and threatens to cease progress on her latest manuscript. But when her nephew Edward brings chilling news of a death at his former school, Winchester College, not even her debilitating ailment can keep Jane from seeking out the truth. Arthur Prendergast, a senior pupil at the prestigious all-boys’ boarding school, has been found dead in a culvert near the schoolgrounds—and in the pocket of his drenched waistcoat is an incriminating note penned by the young William Heathcote, the son of Jane’s dear friend Elizabeth. Winchester College is a world unto itself, with its own language and rites of passage, cruel hazing and dangerous pranks. Can Jane clear William’s name before her illness gets the better of her?
Over the course of fourteen previous novels in the critically acclaimed Being a Jane Austen Mystery series, Stephanie Barron has won the hearts of thousands of fans—crime fiction aficionados and Janeites alike—with her tricky plotting and breathtaking evocation of Austen’s voice. Now, she brings Jane’s final season—and final murder investigation—to brilliant, poignant life in this unforgettable conclusion.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Barron's poignant 15th and final whodunit featuring Jane Austen as a sleuth (after 2022's Jane and the Year Without a Summer) is set in 1817, the year of the author's death. Suffering from an unknown ailment and determined not to brood on the ravages of her declining health, Jane agrees to investigate the case of 16-year-old Winchester College student William Heathcote, a friend of her nephew, Edward. Relentlessly mocked at school because of his stutter, William stands accused of knocking his chief tormentor, Arthur Pendergast, on the head and sending him into a canal where he drowned. Another student swears Arthur intended to expose William's illicit alliance with a local girl and William killed him to protect the lady's reputation. To make matters worse, William refuses to reveal his whereabouts on the day Arthur died. Jane's investigation uncovers a dark plot to frame William and foment rebellion at the school. Barron expertly underscores the purposeful cruelty and classism of English public schools in Austen's time, which existed strictly to harden the future leaders of the Empire, and elicits deep emotion out of Jane's struggles against her own mortality. This is a fitting send-off for a beautifully realized series.
